


to the neon God they made

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [115]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 'you're such a jerk' means 'i love you', Bucky's brain really is a MESS, Bucky's total failure to recognize his own massive psychological progress, CPTSD, Disabled Character, Hydra did a number on Bucky, M/M, Mentally Ill Character, Mercedes and her not!uncles, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sex that isn't really about sex, Steve being well aware of Bucky's own massive psychological progress, Steve has a lot of FEELINGS, Steve has managed to get pretty perceptive, Triggered States, Unexpected Triggers, Unrepentant Adoration, exchange of tokens, non-verbal communication, recovery is a spiral, slightly desperate affirmation sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 02:53:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6936262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They aren't his dogtags. </p><p>That's the first thing he knows, and he knows that because he was <i>fucking wearing his</i> when he hit the rocks beside the river, and like his fucking coat and maybe his fucking soul they were fed to some HYDRA incinerator decades ago. So they're not. There's no fucking way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it. 
> 
> Reminder that canon for this fic still stops at _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_. 
> 
> This fic is concurrent with the previous one ["so they like you (do they like you)"].

The patch of silver-metal-flash on the dresser is hard to miss. 

For him. 

He has . . . habits. Patterns. Things that matter. Bucky knows that, about himself. He also knows (as much as he knows anything like this) that he didn't used to, that once upon a time his sense of tidiness was limited to "do I know where all my stuff is?" - and since he didn't have much stuff, that wasn't hard. Anything more than that depended on who'd start nagging him about it and whether he cared and whether cleaning it up or telling them to fuck off would end up with more work or trouble in the long run. 

Once upon a time he looked for every way to do the least he could, to get what he wanted. Sometimes that was still a lot, because he was better than most at looking hours, weeks, even years ahead and figuring out that a little effort now'd save a lot later, but that's still how he thought. That used to be him and he used to be happy with it.

And that's the start of a long, slow slide into ugly thoughts. So he tries not to think about how now is . . . different. 

He can't stand leaving things a mess. Or - in disorder, because fuck, if you looked at it in some ways stacked flats of food or boxes of it's still a mess even if it's on the counter, but he can forget stuff goes somewhere else and at least it's in order. It's the disorder he can't take. Stuff just . . .out, or askew, or what the fuck ever: can't handle it. 

Not for very long, anyway, not without it scratching at the back of his skull like a dog trying to get in out of a fucking blizzard. If there's a place something goes, it should fucking go there, assuming he fucking remembers. There's a way things are supposed to be. If they're not like that, bad shit happens. Fuck sometimes he knows that even when he can't remember where something goes and just . . . something about where it is, is wrong. And he doesn't _want_ the fucking consequences. Not of that. 

That knowledge lives down in the base of his spine, along with shit like "if you touch that red hot stove you are going to burn your hand", way, way below thought. Stuff you had to learn just like you have to learn every fucking thing, but once you know it goes into every fucking nerve and you can't stop knowing. 

On the one hand, it's kind of fucking humiliating to get stressed out over whether or not the fucking shirts are folded right and in the right piles inside the drawers; on the other, it's also really fucking easy to fix and there is only so much God-damned energy he has to fight with this shit. He doesn't fucking like it, but given everything, _not being a fucking shit-show about stuff being untidy_ is low on his list of habitual emotional patterns to fix. 

Maybe he'll start thinking about it when _have the basic ability to ask for something without acting like a whipped dog_ manages to get some traction, and that's still not going to be any time soon. 

So things _go_ places, get put away places - and nothing goes on the top of the bureau at the foot of the bed, except sometimes wallets overnight. And it's not night and wallets aren't flashing silver. So right now, what's there might as well be neon fucking orange with fucking lights pointed at it saying _ATTENTION GOES HERE_. 

He's been agitated all fucking morning. Thinks he dreamed about something last night, but can't remember what, just that it's sticking to the inside of his skin. He keeps starting to do shit and then getting distracted, realizing an hour later that whatever he started's half-done and then not being able to clean _it_ up, which isn't fucking helping. 

He pulled his shirt and undershirt over his head as he came into the room, because while he stared at the fucking half-folded paper on the table and tried to figure out what to do with it (because somehow when he's looking at it he forgets _pick it up, put it back in the fucking folder, put it in the closet_ and the whole thing turns into fucking rocket science), he'd idly picked at the stitches near his collar-bone enough to draw blood, and only noticed when the collar of his shirt started sticking to his skin. The motion and seeing the silver happen at the same time, so he has to either finish the one or undo it before he can take a second look at the other. 

Bucky finishes pulling the fucking bloodied clothes off, throws them in the laundry hamper and goes to look at what the fuck is on the dresser. 

And all of it happens in a handful of seconds: coming in, catching the glimpse of silver as he goes to take the shirts off, wondering what the fuck it is, throwing the shirts aside, all of it. Not enough time for real thought. Not enough to make the shape of a thought, to fill in the shape of wondering-what-it-is with an idea. Just a litany of _no_ : Steve doesn't wear watches; himself, he doesn't wear anything; it's not keys; isn't - . . .and so on. It's a handful of seconds, not enough time to do much. And if that only takes a handful of seconds, it shouldn't take _another_ handful to understand what he's looking at, but it . . . does. 

It takes . . . more than that, more than a handful. More than two. It takes a lot of seconds before he can see what's there and _understand_.

Minutes, maybe. 

And they're not - 

They're. 

They aren't his dogtags. 

That's the first thing he knows, and he knows that because he was _fucking wearing his_ when he hit the rocks beside the river, and like his fucking coat and maybe his fucking soul they were fed to some HYDRA incinerator decades ago. So they're not. There's no fucking way. 

But they're scratched and battered and the letters are stamped in instead of pushed out and they . . . read what they used to? He thinks. The shape is . . . right? 

Except that there's something just not. Just . . .off. 

It takes a few seconds longer before he can see. Before he can recognize what's off. 

Take in that the line for serial number, tetanus shot and toxoid, and blood-type is missing. (Used to be A, now . . .who the fuck knows? He's not exactly inclined to let anybody fucking find out.) And that the next-of-kin reads has _Steve_ Rogers, not _Sarah_ (two years dead by the time the question was asked but fucked if he was going to list any of his kin and listing Steve would mean questions he didn't want to deal with and it's not like the Army fucking knew anyway and that way it'd still get to Steve - ), and the address is _here_ , the here of now, home, not the tenement of - 

The thing that it takes even longer to understand, even though he's staring at it the whole time, is the line of Cyrillic letters where serial number would be. Until it swims into focus like a hidden fucking picture and he knows that it's just transliteration of letters, characters, that ТТЕОTЛ is only TTEOTL (and there's almost hysterical laughter at how close, how close they are, Latin and Cyrillic and how you could make that a fucking metaphor and write it in blood) and he knows what that's for. What it means. 

Stupid fucking sentimental bullshit. 

He'll always know what that means. _Fuck_ (and the laughter gets caught around this, too) there's pretty hard fucking evidence it's down there in the tiny fucking handful of things he always has. 

(In his head, maybe, there's two boys yelling at each other. Ten or eleven years old, second-hand clothes, worn out shoes. Two boys mad at each other, shouting beside railroad tracks, one of them angry because he thinks he's being forgotten and the other one furious because the first one thinks that. And in his head he can only guess how scared one is, but the other one, he knows, _he fucking knows_ how scared that one is, right then.)

And then he can see the other thing, the last thing, that the second tag isn't his _either_. A different kind of not-his. Not for any of those reasons. Not because of that. For a different reason. 

(The smaller one yells, fists down by his side - _'course it is, 'course you are, s'what always happens, I never keep up, people always get tired of waiting, I_ always _get left behind! It just took you longer!_ )

(The bigger one throws his hat at the smaller one and tells him he's a jackass and he's stupid and he's a punk and he's fucking _stupid_ too - _not me, not by me, I'm not going_ anywhere _without you, stupid!_ Shouts that it's just a girl, just girls, don't be so fucking stupid - !) 

The second tag isn't his because it's Steve's. The same shape. The same changes, except - where it makes a difference - the other way around. 

( _I'm not going anywhere, you're_ stuck _with me, forever, till we're_ dead _! You hear me? I'm_ not _everyone else you stupid punk! So don't you fucking say that! I chased you all the fucking way out here! I'm not with them I'm here with_ you _, I'm always with you! You should fucking know that!_ )

And Steve is a fucking sentimental idiot. 

(Maybe the smaller one stands there, fists tight and jaw tight and eyes watery, glaring; the other one wears a face that looks almost like a glare, but not, and shoves his friend's shoulder, half-hearted.) 

And right now Bucky can't breathe. 

( _I'm always with you. Forever. I'm with you to the end of the line. And Judgement Day and . . . and Kingdom Come, and all the ages, and . . . whatever that stupid verse is. World without end, amen. You're stuck with me. Always._ ) 

(Maybe after a second, the smaller boy says, _S''in omnes generationes saeculi saeculorum, amen'. You don't stop cheating with the King James you're never gonna pass Religion._ And the other boy says, _Shut up and come back, Steve, it's cold out here_ , and maybe no one but him knows how scared he was right up till then.) 

And there's so fucking much -

There's too. 

He can't think past - 

His head's full of . . . _noise_. Grinding, roaring like the fucking ocean against a cliff, just endless fucking waves of noise, never ebbing enough to let him think. Where he can't look, there are the shapes of thoughts, and ideas. The noise is almost like laughing, but nothing's fucking funny, just painful: at this, at the two fucking idiot children out of memory, at Steve's nervous way of trying to dodge an awkward moment, at himself for how unsteady he is, how this knocks him askew, at himself for _everything_ , how fucking angry he is with himself - a lot of things, too many things. 

_Fuck._

But right now he can't breathe. Can't actually breathe. Not right. Something locked around his fucking chest can't get more than the shallowest fractions, and just - 

It's just a thing. They're just things. Cheap metal punched into shapes. Forced into spheres, strung together with more, holding - they're just things. 

Letters are just shapes. 

His fingers are on the metal, the edges of the top tag. And he stands there for a while. A long time. Long enough for the idiot kitten to come in, jump up on the dresser, rub her face against his fingers and meow. 

Then he picks them up. 

And he picks her up, and he sits on the bed. And the thing is - 

And the thing is. 

Here's the thing. 

He knows what Steve's doing. Knows how Steve's head works, isn't stupid. Knows why he left them here, the shape of the thoughts that would tell Steve this way's easier, this way dodges . . . things, things that would make it hard, when it shouldn't be hard because there's nothing he hasn't already - 

Knows the thought, that it's not even . . . it's not (fuck, _fuck_ , fuck _you_ he can think it he can finish the _fucking_ thought - ) . . . wrong. Steve's thought. Not wrong. 

And he knows why it's made it so he can't breathe. Knows what so much, so much fucking shit is telling him he's _not allowed_ , while all the other shit tells him he _has to_ \- 

Letters are shapes but words are _noise_ and Steve can say, and say, but this is a thing, these are - 

He can hold them in his hand. He can touch them. Words are noise, breath and they're gone; these don't go, don't go away, stay. And whatever he does with them is an answer. Back to the answer, the only answer, how many fucking times is he going to have to answer, _God_ , how many: what's real and what isn't, believe this or don't, accept this or don't, whatever, whatever he fucking does is an answer and there are only two answers and anything he does will be one of them _because the fucking question is his_ \- 

All the shit says he fucking can't, all the shit says he fucking must, and they scream at each other and neither of them gives a fuck what he actually _wants_ , doesn't think it matters, doesn't think it's _real_ \- no him nothing else just two, those two screaming. Until it's all he can do to keep from being torn up.

Steve couldn't give him this, couldn't stay here for him to find it and (it's fucking funny, too fucking funny) _good fucking thing_ , because. Because then all of it _would_ rip him apart. If Steve were here. Couldn't _wait_ , if Steve were here, sit here like a child with his hands over his ears not listening. He'd just, they'd fucking tear him apart. Between _commanded_ and _forbidden_ coiling so fucking hard in knots something would fucking give and the weakest point is his fucking _mind_ , the part that thinks, and it'd be too much. 

Even now - 

Alone, still. Still. Even without that it's a long time caught. Still, and here, metaphorical hands over metaphorical ears and real body just . . . still. Clutching at breath and the stupid fucking little animal walking around him yowling and upset. The fucking object of all of it sitting in his hand, the one that can feel. A long fucking time of all of that before he can even find the shape of what he fucking wants. _He_ wants. Not them not the fucking screaming _either part_ , no. No _fuck you_ , not that, not them. 

He wants. What he wants. 

( _I want -_ ) 

If Steve were here, the screaming would rip him in half, couldn't've even fucking found anything else before they did. Not what he wants. 

He _wants_.

(Fuck, God, Christ and Mother of God, so much, please, _please_ \- ) 

Shape of what _he wants_. The shape he can't look at for very long. Because he will fucking lose it. Because he will fucking lose, lose his balance, lose footing, lose - 

What he wants isn't supposed to fucking matter. 

But the answer hasn't fucking changed since he fucking broke everything by remembering the question. He makes himself move. 

When the chain settles on his neck for a second it feels like acid, eating in, or like fucking burning needles sliding under his skin. Like the chain and what's on it are like that. They're not; they're just steel. Just metal, just cheap fucking _stuff_. They're cold from the air. That's all. 

And he sits there, for a minute, right palm pressing the tags against his sternum until they warm to the same temperature as his skin, and the eating, burning, stops. Maybe. For now. 

Then he digs in the bedside table drawer for the treat-ball and fills it, drops it on the floor for the kitten, and goes to find Steve.

 

The first time they met, really met, Steve already had a black eye. It was a couple days old. 

Back then the world was about neighbourhoods. You knew everyone in the neighbourhood. More or less. Knew _of_ them. Knew about them. Bucky knew this was Steve Rogers, year younger than him, no dad, mom working as a nurse, poor even by the standards of the neighbourhood, and then poorer because Steve was always getting sick, always needed something else. 

Never paid attention to the kid besides that. Bucky's mom would sniff about Sarah Rogers, who tacked an old sheet up over the window for a curtain and didn't care. But Bucky's mom would sniff about anyone given half the chance. It was how she passed her time, judging everyone else for what they did or didn't show the rest of the world. How she built her own tower to look down from. 

She stopped sniffing out loud about Sarah Rogers when Bucky started bringing Steve around all the time, though. At least she was better than that. But before, nobody cared. 

But that day Steve had a black eye already. And Robbie Brandon and his gang were bullies, abd Bucky didn't like them anyway, and he'd left home because his mom and dad were shouting at each other. He hated listening to them shouting. Always hurt. Trying to make it stop just got him in trouble, though, and then what hurt was whatever part of him got smacked for talking back. It made him edgy and angry. Ready to punch something. 

And three against one wasn't fair anyway anyhow and when the one was so small, that was worse. Bucky didn't like things that weren't fair, and there were sure as Hell a lot of them not to like, but most of them he couldn't do anything about. They were too big. Robbie Brandon and his lackeys - not so much. 

He jumped in without bothering to find out what the fight was about: at least he wasn't related to a damn one of them, so it wouldn't be _family_ complaining at his mother later if he blacked their eyes, either. Probably still get in trouble with his mom, but his dad'd tell him _good job_ where she couldn't see. Or maybe where she could but they were already yelling today anyway. 

Turned out Robbie'd stolen penny-candy from another even littler kid, littler-young and not just littler-small, which was the kind of thing Robbie Brandon did, and Steve'd jumped in to get it back. And when Steve told him that, Bucky asked him if he was stupid. 

When Steve didn't answer Bucky told him if he kept doing that he'd just get beaten black and blue every time - and Steve demanded, _So?_

Bucky's nose was bleeding and he stared at the kid but he didn't really have an answer. He shook his head, wiped the blood away from his own nose with his sleeve exactly the way his mom never wanted him to, and said, _C'mon. I want something to drink._

Sometimes he wonders why Steve followed - it wasn't like Steve'd been happy about being rescued, or liked being asked if he was stupid, or was much impressed with being told he was always going to get his ass kicked up the street and around the corner. Other times he thinks maybe, maybe it had something to do with Steve never having anyone to tell him _c'mon_ before, to step in and keep him from getting beat up, to care about what happened afterwards. How even if that first stuff pissed him off, this other part meant something. He didn't have anyone. Just his mom, and moms did things differently. Back then, at least. 

After that, Bucky found Steve at school, at church if he could, afterwards. Looked for him on the weekends so they could go find something to do. Steve was better company than Bucky's cousins and their friends, anyway. He thought about things, which they didn't do much, and liked stories, and always had something new he was chasing off after, even if he had to stop halfway through the chase to cough himself blue. He missed a lot of school because of being sick, but he was so smart it almost didn't matter. Had better ideas of things to do for fun than scaring a mutt by tying cans to its tail, or throwing rocks at a cat. 

And things were just . . . better, when Steve was around. Memory wants to say that somehow when Steve was around everyone was less stupid, and fewer stupid and upsetting things happened, and all of that, but with the hindsight of years and knowing way, way too fucking much about how the human mind works now, Bucky's pretty sure he himself just didn't care as much. That the stupid things people said didn't bug him as much, that he could pay attention to Steve talking about Alexander the Great instead of thinking about the ways people were awful to each other. 

(God, there were a lot of those.) 

It's just Steve was, is, the bright point of light that makes everything at least a little better, even when they were idiot fucking kids, so Bucky let his orbit swing wide and then settle into an endless circle around the idiot who kept getting himself beaten up in alleys because he couldn't stand the fact some fucking yahoo was mouthing off in a theatre and upsetting the girls sitting a few seats away. Because that's who Steve was. Is. 

For all he'd been mostly happy for Steve (barring the part cursing him and God and especially fucking Erskine and Stark for the fact that now Steve'd just go run off and pick bigger fights with worse people and Bucky just wanted to go _home_ ), there'd been a sour taste in Bucky's mouth, more than a little. Watching the rest of the world figure out what he already knew, turn from throwing stuff when it could be bothered to even notice Steve to praising him to the sky and staking any kind of claim, tie. Because now the package was enough of the right kind of pretty for them to see. 

_Now_ they cared, when they couldn't be bothered to give a fuck and see what was in front of them before. That part'd been bitter. 

And that part's never really left. Not all of it. Maybe not even a lot. It's not their fault anymore, maybe, just about nobody alive now _could've_ been otherwise, but it . . . sticks. Enough to matter. 

( _I was here first._ ) 

Maybe, if he thinks about it, that's part of the burnt-out house in Breitenau too. 

 

Used to be a pretty simple trick to finding Steve: if he wasn't where he was supposed to be (be it home, school, a part time job, or wherever they were set to meet), you just had to look around for the nearest place guys would take a fight to get it out of the street where the cops might break it up. You didn't want to get the fucking cops involved in anything, ever: one cop, on his own, yeah, maybe he could be a person, maybe used to be your friend, maybe your relative, maybe you grew up with him. Maybe wasn't bad. But cops, plural, were bad news. Get more than one, and all they remembered how to be was cops. 

Then everyone else was fucked. At least anyone who lived anywhere near they did. 

It's probably still the same. Bucky can't think of any reason it'd be different. But it's old memory, old knowledge, wrapped around knowing it used to be that how you find Steve if he's missing is just look for the place someone'd take a fight. 

Steve doesn't pick fights that way anymore. Has a lot less to prove. Or maybe more to prove, because now when he picks fights it's too big for a fucking alleyway or parking lot. Alleyways and parking lots don't prove anything anymore and he has to go for fucking tanks and who knows what. But finding someone's still mostly a matter of looking where you know they'll be, and Steve left this morning with nothing particular planned, so he'd wander, and Steve's wandering pulls him some places like a planet hits points in its orbit. 

And Peggy Carter's in Minnesota for the start of trials for the new treatment, which narrows down the orbit even further. Steve might go somewhere else first, but by afternoon, he'll end up at the Tower. 

You find someone by going where you know they will be and waiting till they are, so that's where Bucky goes.

 

There's something completely fucking unreal about the Tower and Steve's floor. 

It's in the way you can trace every fucking step it took to get here: every step from the tenement Steve shared with his mom, to this. And every single step makes sense, by itself, and side by side with the ones just around it. As much sense as anything. And then you stop and look back at the whole trail and it's a fucking . . . not even a fairy-tale, it's too weird for a fairy-tale, fairy-tales have their own fucking internal logic: this is just something you know should be a fucking lie. A story. And isn't. 

And if there's any fucking part of it more like that than _him_ , Bucky can't think of it. 

All of it's unreal. 

But he knows why he's thinking about that, right now. Knows why he's _noticing_. He could try to make himself stop, but it won't work: it can't. 

He never wanted things. Hadn't ever been that fucking complicated, it wasn't a _thought_. It was impulse, reaction: pain or approval, move to the right one. Fucking amoebas do that much, fucking viruses. There's pieces of knowing, of memory: watching them cut a broken fragment of a knife-blade out of his leg, watching a woman walk into a room and watching someone else kill her, feeling his own bone snap under his left hand. 

The old one. The one that's gone. 

Remembers these and more of these and feeling . . . nothing. No impulse to do anything or stop anything: without orders there was no purpose and without a purpose who the fuck cared what happened, to him or anyone else, and that was fucking _everything_. Always. _Wanting_ didn't happen, wasn't part of how the fucking world worked, you can't _want_ things when there isn't even a fucking "you" there anymore - 

Except that you fucking can, and you _fucking do_ , you just don't know what it fucking means, what it's called, it can't make you do anything, you can't touch it, there's just - 

There's listening to a man tell you what you are, what you're for, knowing it's true because _this man says it_. Then there's how everything fucking falls apart like a bullet through a window and you still don't _want_ anything, you don't even fucking know that that means, you _need_ , need like fucking air to know what happened, to make it make sense. 

A voice, and a name, and a face, and you _need_. 

There's no fucking words for it. For that. Words belong to people, they're a fucking people _thing_ and that, that place is below _people_. Below most fucking animals, even. Under. Beneath it. So there's no fucking words there's just a fucking hook buried in your chest and your gut and your head that won't ever stop pulling, that hurts so much your head is one single scream and it _doesn't stop._

And you need. 

There is no word for the person you're still looking for when there isn't even a fucking _you_ anymore. 

Maybe most people don't need one. Maybe you can't drag most people down to where they would. 

Earlier, he thought about finding Steve, out there. He probably could. 

(Fuck, who the fuck does he think he's kidding: of course he fucking could. Even fucking thinking it starts the shape in his head, the pattern where every-fucking-thing known about a target spreads itself out and turns itself into a fucking map he can follow and he knows _everything_ about Steve. Things Steve doesn't even fucking know. He could've found him. Followed him.)

Came here instead to wait. Didn't want to, but didn't want the risk of being out there, right now. Didn't want that more. 

Fuck, he is such a fucking God-damned mess. ( _Fuck, Steve, what the fuck do you think you -_ ) 

The agitation that means he doesn't want to be out there makes it hard not to break things. Push them over, tear them up, just - and maybe, maybe he's been wrong. He thought something was true but maybe he's been wrong, or, or whatever you fucking call it when you're right but only as far as it goes, only so far, and so you might as well be fucking wrong. 

The thought stabs into his head, silver-flash, unblackened knife-blade: that it's not just about getting the screaming out of his head and his body being too fucking stupid to know there's nothing he can do, and maybe it's because once something's broken it fucking stays that way and _he knows he broke it_. 

The thought _stabs him_ because when he turns back towards the kitchen counter, his phone's not where he thought he put it. And fuck, it's nothing, it's a slip, it's _normal_ the fucking thing's just on the other side, normal people do the same fucking thing _everyone does_ \- 

But for a fucking second something he thought he'd done, something he remembered, it's gone and wiped out like he doesn't even fucking exist. But if he tore the cupboard door free, smashed the countertop, did _enough damage_ his head wouldn't fucking be able to do that. Maybe that's part of it. 

Probably is.

He could do without any more fucking revelations about himself but he knows he's going to get them because there, in his head, what he wants still doesn't fucking matter. He knows that. 

And he knows it'll get better, when Steve gets here. Be easier. 

Fuck, he hates that he knows that, God, and what it means. 

But he knows, because if Steve's here he can _make_ himself know that Steve's real, get it out of his fucking head and into the rest of him, skin and bone and fucking all. One person. One thing. One thing he _knows_ is real, and he can start there, he can. One real thing becomes frame of reference. The thing he can test other things by. 

He can make himself know Steve's real. 

(And if none of it's real then _fuck_ real, he _doesn't - fucking - want - 'real'_ , and they will fucking drag him out of this fucking delusion over their _fucking_ dead bodies and all they'll _fucking get_ is his.)

He doesn't want to be like this. Never wanted it, never wanted what it does, the way it fucking loads Steve down worse than Atlas, that was never what he wanted, never what he meant. Just, he can't - just. 

Just if he wants to be anything, he's stuck being this. Like this. Not enough of him left to be anything, without it. 

_If what I remembered was real, I wanted it. All of it._ He'd said that. He told Steve that. Didn't he? Steve asked, _what changed_ , wanted to know why Bucky chose that instead of nothing. Why he started letting Steve . . . tell him things, tell him what real was and what it wasn't - and Bucky told him, he remembers that. Pretty sure he remembers that. 

_If it was real I wanted it._ He'd sat on a fucking roof and known that and come home to a fucking . . . reading lamp in the closet where he had to crawl to sleep and known everything it meant. If it was real. If what he remembered was real, he knew every fucking thing it meant and Jesus, God, it didn't make wanting less. 

Except it took weeks, months, a summer after he chose before he got, before he could have - 

Before he could even try to find out if the _last thing_ was real, last thing he wanted, because he'd been so fucking afraid. 

Afraid of the last answer that mattered. That _those_ memories weren't real and were his own fucking fault too. That it was a lie he told himself. That he'd never done it, that Steve never let him, that Steve never _wanted_ him, wanted him to. Didn't go from distracted to lust-drunk in a handful of heartbeats, didn't throw himself at it, didn't throw himself at being as fucking stupid as Bucky was and both of them pretending they didn't have to think about it, about consequences, about implications, about anything. 

That all of it was something he'd made up in the dark, knowing Steve was dead anyway so it didn't, couldn't fucking matter. That he'd lied to himself so he could have something to fucking remember that he _wanted_ to, and then wrapped himself in it until he believed it because he didn't fucking have anything else. 

It hadn't been what most people would think. Them, they weren't. The two of them. And that's funny because it'd make it _easier_ \- the world, people, they have stories for that, stories that fit in the mould. Secret pining that ends in _I-love-yous_ , heart-break and choices, lies and being torn in half, all that shit, like everyone expects. People understand that. Everyone fucking understands that. 

Hadn't been it, never had. That would've been easier, simpler, cleaner. Fuck, he'd've known what the fuck to _do_ with that. Probably wouldn't've done what he did, figured out how to poison it all with alcohol and the shit inside his head. He'd been in love, before - he just _hated_ it, so he'd fucking ignore it until it stopped. He remembers that. 

It wasn't that. Isn't that. More complicated than that. More of a huge tangled fucking mess. 

It was the crawling under his skin he couldn't get rid of. It was nothing else fucking working. It was relief turning the more he understood, getting fucking _angry_ because Steve shouldn't be there, shouldn't have to be there and then stepping on that, strangling it down because the idiot finally had everything he fucking wanted. 

It was finding out he was a lot fucking weaker than he thought. 

It was the girl at the pub before Steve came in, pretty and flirting, distracting and _good_ (fuck the sliver of relief that spoke too soon) for a handful of minutes, who was everything he wanted right then - until she touched him, until she reached over and playfully shoved his shoulder, and the world heaved and nausea prickled in through his skin and he'd left the others and the girl at the table, looking for hard liquor while they drank beer. Watched her flirt with Dugan and Monty instead. And then it was how Steve doing the same thing to him later didn't . . . do that. 

It was all he wanted being to go _home_ except he couldn't because that home wouldn't be there, because even if the War ended and they both lived, everything was different. 

It was two fucking mad scientists taking his best friend and remaking him, sculpting him like he was fucking clay. It was all the fucking people who couldn't be bothered to fucking look at Steve until he matched a pretty picture in their fucking heads, and how even if Steve lived through this he was going to end up dealing out little pieces of his soul to them, one by one, and never fucking know he did it until it was gone. It was knowing every fucking thing about Steve while all they saw was the fucking shine and how most of them didn't even fucking deserve that. 

And _I was here first_ \- that, too. Maybe. 

And knowing that after this shit was done, if he got Steve through the War that . . . was it. There wasn't anything else, Steve _had_ everything he wanted and there was nothing Bucky could do he couldn't do better himself now, it was done, there wasn't anything left. It'd almost felt like relief. 

The relief of staring off the cliff. _Nothing else left - so here, have everything._

Then moments clawed out of the War, moments with Steve, were the one time - the only time - he felt like he might still be alive. And everywhere else he knew he was dead, and just too fucking stubborn to lie down and admit it. 

All of it tangled up and knotted and snarled and unravelled way beyond what people would think. And he remembered it, remembered _knowing_ he couldn't keep anything, would end up with nothing, so for now he _wanted_ everything. 

Remembered getting it, more or less, in the fucked up way the sharp edge of a war gives most things. And then for way too fucking long nothing could tell him if he made it up, except asking. Asking if he he'd lied to himself. Asking if he'd fucking dreamed it all, desperate and beyond pride down in the fucking dark. 

Taking the risk of hearing _yes_ and seeing every single fucking thought that would have to come written all across Steve's face. 

Been weeks, months with that. He fucking hated it. 

It'd felt a lot like this. The ache and mindless fear and inability to be fucking still - it all feels familiar. Like he does now. 

Except then it was clinging to the rock halfway down the fucking metaphorical cliff instead of standing at the edge. Too fucking close to the edge, Jesus fucking Christ, but still at the edge, not over. 

Knowing (maybe) how it ends this time. That it'll get better. Be better. He already knows the fucking answer this time (maybe), _he's the fucking one_ who needed to _give it_ , he knows, fuck he _should_ know if he had anything like fucking sanity he'd know there's no reason for this. The only one putting him so close to the fucking edge is himself. But he doesn't, so he has to . . . check. 

Make sure. 

It's like touching something, just to make sure it's still there. Exactly like it. The same. Is that. That's what he's doing. Waiting to do. Wanting. Because he can't fucking cut out the part of him that knows it might not be. That there might be nothing. 

Trap, trick, lie, _test_. 

Can't trust he's not failing. 

He's not sure why. He's not sure what about this, about right now, about the stupid tags, about Steve getting them, that's making him want this. Need to look, need to check, make _sure_. He doesn't - it isn't - 

Maybe because they're a thing. Concrete. An object. He thought that before? He thinks he was thinking about this before. 

This isn't new. It isn't news. Not a fucking revelation, this isn't even a new . . . 

It's not like he's not used to this, the fight in his head, about what can't be real and still is. It started before he could even fucking put shapes to what's real, before he could even conceive it, let alone wrap his fucking head around it (let alone name it). He doesn't know why a thing, an object, this thing, is throwing it into - 

It's almost fucking - no, it's fucking ridiculous. It's exasperating. It's stupid. 

(And that's a lie. He knows it's a lie. Or most of a lie. He's a liar, he knows the reason.) 

(The reason is _you wanted this_. The reason is you wanted this and you got it and just like the fucking broken cabinet doors and shattered counter you can't pretend you _didn't_ because you can _see it_ and every time you look at the fucking things you know they're real, you can _see them_. You _wanted_ this and you don't get what you want so if you did you're making it up and you're going to fucking pay, and pay, and - and that, that he does know, has known for a fucking long time: it goes, you wanted this and you got it so now you have to run, and now you have to hide, because you have to pay - )

(He always knows the fucking reason it's always the same fucking reason it was the answer when it was the first fractured fucking memory of the fall; when it was Steve listening to him clawing at them and _not_ doing what he didn't, didn't want, when what he didn't want was for Steve to tell; when it was Carter, telling him why Steve fucking crashed that stupid fucking plane; and then Steve's face, in the hall, hearing _Breitenau_ \- fucking all of them, same fucking answer. He wanted it. Wanted, desperately, fuck, oh Mother of _God_ , wanted. And got, and fell into this. And maybe he should be fucking grateful it's _just_ this now, it's not, he can, he doesn't have to run - if he can throw himself at this fast enough, hard enough, he doesn't have to go, maybe he _is_ fucking grateful - )

(He knows all of. It's just.) 

(Why he wanted this.)

(That's what he doesn't know. Can't see. Can't look at.) 

He realizes he's pacing, his version of pacing, moving through the rooms. He tries to make himself stop. Realizes strands of his hair are touching his face, his neck; there's an internal snarl when he pulls the elastic out and then puts it back in, raking his hair back from his face. Too long - no, too _short_ , he was angry when he cut it last, cut too much, and fuck he'd get rid of it except for the way thinking about what, who he'd see in the mirror makes his stomach turn just fucking thinking about. 

He scrubs his hands over his face trying to get rid of the thought. The feeling of wearing long-dead skin as it rots away. Gets hit, gets sideswiped, ends up _acutely fucking aware_ of the difference between skin and metal, muscle-nerve-vein over bone versus the shell over wire and frame and Christ this is probably fucking funny. 

Is it funny? 

It might be funny. 

He's pacing again. He tries to make himself stop. 

Coffee's not something he wants right now, but it's something to do, especially if he's really fucking finicky about it. Starts with the reverse-fucking-osmosis water that makes him shake his fucking head but ends up here in its dispenser anyway the same way the place gets vacuumed and cleaned when they're not here. Which is fucking crazy. 

You can trace the line from here to there, from storing everything in fucking tins so the mice didn't get it (and you just hoped they were only mice) to invisible fucking staff in this fucking tower on fucking Park Avenue, tower that's a fortress and a palace and its own fucking city in miniature and a host who'd throw _more_ fucking money, stuff, if he thought he could get away with it - you can trace the fucking line, but that won't make it make any more fucking sense. 

He forces himself to measure water. Time it to fucking boil. Measure the coffee mix. 

Thinks about all the shit built into stoves now to keep them from turning your home into a death-trap you can't see or smell or stop. 

Finds a mug and sugar. 

His phone vibrates against the counter, buzzing loud and abrupt on against the surface and it makes him start and his right hand reach for the knife he _doesn't fucking have on him_ , because he made himself take it off and put it on the bureau in the main bedroom where it lives because this is, should be, home, a home, a kind of home, and he fucking refuses to need to be armed at home. 

So there's nothing where his right hand goes except cloth anyway. 

(Paltry fucking pittance, he knows, that distinction; not much fucking difference when there's always something he could use to kill within arm's reach. He makes it anyway.) 

The line of text on his screen reads _Captain Rogers has arrived_ , and the number-of-origin is the one that calls to here - not to anyone, any _person_ here, but here, the building, the thing Tony Stark's accidental fucking child wears like a much, much fucking bigger suit of armour than Stark's ever thought of making. 

(And it's funny. Fucking hilarious. He never fucking asked JARVIS to use text, use the phone and its screen and the text it shows. Instead of sound. Voice. Out-loud and un-sourced. Because he never fucking had to. He couldn't tell you why it helps, either, why it's a step back from the shit that twists through the whole fucking concept - banks and banks and banks of fucking tape spooling and unspooling and then the voice, voice that wasn't a fucking recording, that was fucking _supposed to be dead_ \- ) 

(He never fucking asked. JARVIS just did it. With Steve, too, when Steve's here. Anyone, here. Nobody, anywhere else, except him when he's alone.) 

For a second he can't remember if he asked for warning, until he opens the app and sees his text one above. JARVIS doesn't do things, not here, on this floor, or for him, around him, without being asked. Except for that. Except for not doing things, and not talking, except through this. 

Pretty good fucking intuition for someone who has to learn everything about humans from the outside. 

 

That day months ago, in the hall, Bucky'd pinned Steve against the wall. Shoved him up against it, harder than he'd meant to, because he needed to make Steve stop. To make him _shut up_ , stop trying to talk, stop trying to _explain_ and ask questions and say things that did not _fucking_ matter because Bucky'd thrown himself off the fucking edge and all that mattered was how badly it was gonna hurt to hit the ground. 

It'd been free-fall. Like everything holding him, tying him up, finally fucking snapped - just for a second, the whole world fucking narrowed to one choice, one thing and that time fucking wasn't even his so he didn't _know_ if he was going to walk away from the fall or it was going to just finish fucking breaking him. 

The world narrowed to _yes_ or _no_ and then almost fucking dropping like a fucking doll when the one he wanted was the one he _got_. 

This time - 

He has no fucking idea what Steve can see. See in him. From him. What's _there_ , as Steve steps out of the elevator into the little half-hallway and then into the kitchen. To where he can _see_ , where Bucky's in his line of sight. Bucky has no fucking idea what he looks like or what's written on his face. He leans on the corner of the wall where kitchen-dining-what-the-fuck-ever gives way to the living-room and he waits, because he has to. 

And there's something to see, to read. He's fucking showing something, probably a lot, because Steve puts the little paper bag he's carrying down on the counter, shrugs off his jacket and leaves it there too, all without even looking at them, looking anywhere but Bucky's face. 

And there's the lines on Steve's forehead, drawing themselves. And the ball-chain, disappearing under his shirt, and the outline of the metal tabs hanging from it. 

_Fuck_. 

It's like a switch in his fucking head, what hits Bucky now. Like the fucking opposite of light-headed, somehow, whatever the fuck that even means. Everything pulling in and contracting to twist and spin around some imagined point in his head. The knot collapsing into its fucking self and erasing the walls, crossing wires between things like _love_ and things like _anger_ and shaking them back together and it all turns into something _else_. Something different.

Something heavy and choking. Something that settles like pain in your chest and you have to drag in every breath around it and you know how fucking hard that is. Something you crave anyway, every fucking suffocating breath and stab and all the ache of it, something you want more than you want to fucking be alive - something. 

And then all you can see, the _only_ thing, is how _much_ of it, the something, this thing - 

\- how much of whatever the _fuck_ it is . . .how it all fucking leads to, fucking belongs to the fucking yellow-haired _idiot_ standing in front of you. Alive and breathing and standing in _fucking_ front of you, looking worried. Right fucking there, this son of a bitch. 

This stupid mouthy reckless punk, the fucking proud stubborn precious stiff-necked _self-righteous_ self- _sacrificing_ naive perfect thoughtless selfless _son of a bitch_. 

And it _sits_ on you, the something, whatever the _fuck_ this is, so much fucking heavier than lead. Than gold. Than the fucking world. It sits on you, and you want it to.

Right now it sits on _him_ , too fucking heavy, and it means he has to wait. He'll die to fucking keep it but it's too fucking much and he's too fucking weak, so he can't move, can't start this and he has to wait. 

Wait for Steve to be the one to move. Wait for Steve to cross the tiny fucking God-damn distance between them, a few fucking feet of tile, worry-lines drawn on his face. Wait for him to close it enough to reach across.

Steve has to do that. Bucky can't. And that's the whole fucking story, isn't it - _I can't, I can't, I'm sorry, you have to -_

But it doesn't fucking matter, really, because Steve does move and now he's close enough. _Finally._ Arms' reach. Close enough, worried face and words starting with, "Bucky, are you - "

Bucky catches Steve's left arm. Pulls Steve towards him, hard, enough to catch Steve off-balance for half a second, so he almost falls into Bucky and sends them both to the fucking floor. Bucky lets go of Steve's arm to pull him close, with that hand on the back of his neck. That same hand. Right hand. He doesn't fucking trust the other one right now, what it'll do, how tight it'd let him cling, what he might break. All the limits it doesn't fucking have, that the rest of him does. Safeguards built into tissue that can only take so fucking much. 

Bucky hauls Steve forward and catches him, cradles the back of his neck. Says, "Fucking shut up, Steve," and then makes sure Steve _does_. Needs him to, even if it's not so much that Steve _shouldn't_ fucking talk as that Bucky fucking _can't_ , not more than that, this, scatter of words. So Steve needs to not fucking ask stupid fucking questions so the answers won't tangle in Bucky's throat and choke him. Not right now.

It's not fucking important anyway, the answers fucking meaningless - _no_ he's not fucking okay, but it doesn't matter, he doesn't fucking care he doesn't fucking _need_ to be okay, right now. Needs _this_ , so fucking much more: needs Steve to be here, and real, and proving every fucking thing else that matters might be. Starting here. 

Everything starts here. 

His shoulders hitting the wall is what tells Bucky he's half-turned, pulling Steve stumbling steps with him until the wall stops them both, solid and abrupt. Not hard enough to knock Bucky breathless but enough that he feels how it's different, the way impact echoes through bone, skin, fluid compared to how it rattles through metal and wire. Doesn't matter, anyway: he feels it but doesn't care, cares more that he can make the wall take his weight and that means he can pull Steve closer. 

Steve's mouth tastes of coffee and something with sugar Bucky doesn't care enough to think about. His skin is warm against Bucky's right hand to start and then Bucky slides his hand up, feels the way Steve's hair shifts under his fingers and his palm and how it's cool to the touch but the head from the skin comes through if you stop, if you hold still if you keep your hand in one place but you have to stop, for a second, and he can, and it does. 

_Fuck_. 

Everything is loud and bright and hurts like too many fucking sparks hitting your skin and he feels that, wants it, fingers in Steve's hair, and Steve's mouth against his. Feels Steve's hands at his hips and then sliding together over his back, up either side of his spine under his shirt - and the cool of the wall where Steve's hands aren't - 

Now, _now_ he's light-headed. Without the wall or the pressure of Steve's hands just below his ribs he might actually fucking end up on the ground because he's not fucking sure he knows which way is up or if it fucking matters. 

Steve pulls his mouth away, a little. He starts to say, "Bucky," and Bucky cuts him off, " _Shut up -_ " because he still _can't_ \- 

But Steve catches the side of Bucky's face with one hand and says, "No, shh, I know, just c'mere - " and his other arm's wrapped around Bucky's waist so he can pull Bucky with _him_ , this time, a few unsteady steps at a time. 

When Steve pulls him down onto the couch, his head's still light and his knee ends up driving hard into Steve's hip. Bucky knows it, feels it happen and knows what it means; the thought even gets started, the one that says he should find a breath, say something. 

He just loses that, all of that, to the feeling of Steve's hands tangling in his hair and guiding his head back, and then the heat and wet of Steve's mouth pressed against his neck, his throat, his collarbone and back, and again but now with the edge of teeth. Teeth pressing into his skin hard enough to burn, ache, and he cradles Steve's head to hold him there while Steve's hands go to his hips to pull him down, close, Steve's left hand sliding from there up under his shirt to the small of his back to hold him there. 

Bucky's knees are on either side of Steve's waist, the heat of Steve's body and skin against the inside of Bucky's thighs and it feels like he can feel every fucking _thread_ of every fucking piece of cloth he's wearing. He shifts his weight back, bends down to kiss Steve's mouth once hard before he pulls far enough away to run both hands under Steve's shirt and help him get it the fuck _off_ , and get rid of his own fucking shirt and the tank-top under it. Chuck them away, without caring where they go and settling back where he was.

The look on Steve's face stops him for a minute. Stops everything for a minute. Bucky's head and heart and lungs, all of them, all arrested by the way Steve looks at him right now. 

Steve's hands rest where they fell, one on Bucky's hip and one on his thigh. Both holding onto him the way you hold something you don't want to break but can't stand to lose. The tags he wears fell askew at his collar after getting his shirt over his head, a line and pool of silver that tugs at Bucky's head but loses to watching Steve's face. And Steve just looks at him, eyes fucking shining-wide, and Bucky can't fucking breathe. Can't read Steve's face or wrap his fucking head around what it means or says except he wants it, this, what he sees, whatever the fuck it is, fucking _Christ_ \- 

Steve brushes Bucky's face with the tips of his fingers - forehead, temple, thumb brushing his cheek and palm curving at his jaw, and breathes, "Jesus Christ you're beautiful," and the ache of everything contracts into a bright fucking core and it _hurts_ and he doesn't fucking care: it's like pulling a knife out of your chest, knowing it might kill you but not fucking _caring_ because something that shouldn't be there is gone and you'd fucking rather bleed out than feel it anymore. 

He catches Steve's hand, can't even tell if he's kissing Steve's palm and wrist or just trying to breathe his skin instead of the air that hurts every time he drags it in. Steve pulls him down, pulls Bucky's mouth to his again. He wraps his arms around Bucky's back, and his fingers dig into skin and metal. Bucky's hand falls to Steve's chest, his ribs; he can feel the gasping breaths like Steve can't breathe any better than Bucky can, and the sweat starting on Steve's skin. 

It pulls the white hot brightness out of Bucky's lungs and his bones, out of his chest into his gut and the base of his spine and Jesus, God, he _wants_. So much, so _fucking_ much. 

(God, Jesus, merciful Christ _please_ -) 

He braces his right arm against the place where the arm of the couch meets the back, so he can bend his head and bite the side of Steve's neck hard, just above the silver flicker of the chain, while he holds the other side of it with his left hand, thumb at Steve's throat. Steve clutches at him, cradles the back of his head, bites out _Fuck_ and then, _oh God, fuck, Bucky -_ as Bucky sucks hard against his skin and _drags_ up the mark he wants, lurid and purple-red, pulling blood out under Steve's skin. 

Does it again, while Steve's fingers dig into the skin at his waist and then flatten, Steve stroking from the edge of metal down to Bucky's waist. And every mark, he wants, touches, _stays_ where he can see them, where they tell him what he did and that he did it. Like he's mapping himself out on Steve's skin, with his blood, marking and never breaking the skin and something in that is - 

Steve's hand moves and he loses the thought and he doesn't fucking care. He tastes salt-sweat and breathes in that and the smell of Steve's skin as he drags his mouth down to the hollow of Steve's throat. He trails his left hand down Steve's collarbone and chest as he moves, sliding his hips back and moving himself between Steve's legs. 

And there are places in your body that break, that tear, so much easier than others, and he knows, can't _not_ know what every single fucking one of them is and can't forget, not even now. He presses his mouth to the space below Steve's breast-bone, the place where the ribcage splits and uncovers the last piece of the heart, so that Bucky can feel it beat against his tongue. He kisses along the bottom curve of Steve's ribs, and then he marks the skin over all the scattered fucking fragile organs it barely protects, and then fucking _didn't_. 

He can't forget that. Not really. Pretends he can, but he's lying, fucking lying to himself first and anyone else after. There's no more signs, the scars are gone because the surgeons were good and it's hard to make anything stay on either of them, but there were bullets that tore through skin and muscle and tissue. One, two, hit and ripped through every fucking soft place in a human corpse, and he fucking shot them. 

That won't go away. Won't let go. Doesn't. Won't. The moment's burned into his head like a fucking brand. 

He wishes it wasn't. Tries to forget about it, lock it away, and sometimes it works for a while - but it's always there, ready to fall back out and catch him. Hit him with how close he got, how close to doing what he was fucking told, and the obscenity of the relief - _fucking_ Christ, the relief, that the target would die, the confusion would _go_. 

The screaming would _stop_. 

(It wouldn't have. It _didn't_ even when he thought the target must be dead. Would never fucking stop.) 

Bucky spreads the fingers of his right hand over Steve's stomach. He just barely presses his palm down and rests his face against Steve's skin for a second to get rid of all of that, all of it, make it _go away_ , bury it in the proof of here and now and _nothing left_ to show what he almost fucking did. Bury it in every single fucking sense telling him Steve's alive, here, his fingers in Bucky's hair and heart still beating, pushing the blood through veins swollen to shed heat. Alive. Always has been. Never dead. 

Never lost. 

_God, God Steve I wanted you and I didn't know what wanting was._

Steve's breath catches when Bucky snaps the button on his jeans, hitches as Bucky pulls them down. Each gasp after that shudders through Steve's skin against Bucky's mouth, while he traces the line of Steve's hip with his teeth and his tongue. Steve's fingers thread through Bucky's hair and stroke it back from his face; Bucky shifts his weight to his left hand and he can feel the way Steve's spine moves when he tries to keep from arching his back, as Bucky's right hand strokes up his stomach and back - no pattern, no goal, just so he can touch muscle and bone and how skin follows them, wrap himself in how Steve's body _feels_ against his hand and how his hand fits against it, lines and curves and solid space. 

And nothing's gone, it's all still fucking there, the noise and everything that drags at him and tries to pull him under - that's never fucking gone, _never_ and he doesn't know how to get away, not for long. But Steve's hand is in his hair and Steve's skin is against his mouth; the inside of Steve's thigh presses against his ribs and even Steve's waist fits against Bucky's inner left arm, pressure and heat and shape, dull but real, so he doesn't fucking care. 

And this, he wants this, and Steve wants this and wants him, from him, wants him to do this - his fingers on Bucky's skull, other hand clutching Bucky's left shoulder, voice and mouth making words like _yes_ and _please_ \- and every fucking second and piece of that ties him here, lets him stay, and the rest can fucking batter him bloody against the rocks but it can't take him away. 

All of this. 

Bucky moves both hands to Steve's hips when he runs parted lips up Steve's cock, the space between thumb and forefinger fitting against the crease where thigh meets hip to hold them still and pin Steve down while he teases. And he does, because he can. Can now. (Couldn't once and this time maybe the laughter that flickers across his mind is real and echoes memory of laughing.) He can keep Steve still, keep him where Bucky wants him. And Bucky knows what every single press of lips and tongue will do, _knows_ and right now revels in knowing. That mouthing at the base of Steve's cock will make his back arch and push _hard_ against anything holding him down, that dragging your tongue up the underside makes Steve groan the way that steals all his breath - all of it, he knows. _Knows_. Wanted. Wanted to know. 

( _I was here first._ ) 

Steve's voice catches on _Jesus, Jesus - Bucky,_ and breaks on _please_ and something hooks into Bucky's brain, different want, different like the world changed ways and it's . . . 

And when Bucky pushes himself on his right hand just enough to look, Steve's watching him, flush spread across his cheeks and the top of his chest, the red feathering out where the cheap steel tags lie against his skin. His eyes are still the same kind of bright that Bucky wants to keep on him for fucking ever, lips just parted. 

And there's something Bucky could say and a long time ago he'd've known what the fuck it was, but not anymore - just scattered formulas, bullshit, facile and shallow and false. Or too much, too fucking long, meaning bleeding out into anemic rote fucking _trash_. He'd've known what to fucking say but what he'd've said isn't right now because everything's fucking changed except the thing that never does. 

_I was lost and fucked up and out of my fucking mind, I didn't know who I was, I didn't know who you were, and I was still looking for you._

He can feel his throat close, but his eyes don't burn. He's lost that, body forgotten how it works. And when he says, "I missed you," he can hear his own voice like it's someone else's, low and scraping and rough. 

Steve's hand twists out of his and curves around Bucky's upper arm, closes enough for Steve to half pull himself forward, half drag back Bucky to up to meet him. He holds Bucky's face in his hands long enough to kiss him hard, _hard_ and Bucky lets him; then Steve's hands go to Bucky's knees, slide under them and pull Bucky to him, over him as Steve lets himself fall back to rest against the arm of the couch. 

Bucky lets him. Catches his balance with his left hand, on the arm of the couch by Steve's shoulder. He kisses Steve again and strokes down Steve's cheek with his right hand, knuckles loosely curled and then fingers spreading to touch the curve of Steve's neck. He flattens his hand, and drags it down until he rests his palm against the hollow of Steve's throat, thumb and fingers either side in a curve. 

Here, here something catches, something caught. Something slows. It's like he forgot how to think: his mind stutters and stumbles. His head is empty, nothing moves, just hollow and stuck, and it's not . . .bad it's just there's nothing to, there's, he doesn't know, he can't think, he can only know his hand palm-flat against Steve's chest and Steve's mouth against his - 

Steve's hands are at the front of his waist, busy and moving; he gets Bucky's jeans undone and slides his hands around, fingertips working under the waist-band to push them down from Bucky's hips. And the stilted moment inside Bucky's head drops, like a wrong step off into empty air. The _empty_ and the _still_ shrivel tight to a tangle that contracts sharp before it goes, before it lets go and drops him and he's here, again, and fuck - _yes_ , jeans off, clothes _gone_ : his, Steve's, there's the moment of kicking them away and they're gone. 

And if there's still some, if there's still . . . _everything_ , the static, the moment of stumble and fall and the rest of the world leering over his metaphorical fucking shoulder, _he doesn't care_ \- it can fucking go, it can stay, he doesn't care. It doesn't matter. 

All he fucking has to think about is here, all he has to know or see or fucking feel is here. Is this. Is how Steve's fingers press into his back as he pushes them up from Bucky's waist to his right shoulder and the left-side scar. Is his own palm where it stays flat against Steve's skin and bone underneath, the inside of his thighs against Steve's hips and how fucking good his cock sliding against Steve's skin feels. 

Better, more, the closer Steve pulls him. 

Bucky keeps his left hand against the couch, not trusting it again, not trusting himself to _remember_ where to stop, to let go. There's only so much muscle and bone can break, even his, but metal and wire - 

Steve buries his face in the curve of Bucky's neck. He's breathing hard enough that each exhale's cool against Bucky's skin just from how fast the air moves. He rocks his hips up against Bucky's and Bucky closes his eyes, right hand holding Steve's head. Steve nuzzles the skin beside his ear and says, "I need you," and it's like something white-hot pushing under Bucky's skin angled down to his spine except he wants it, God, please, so fucking much. 

He manages to say, "Dunno if you noticed," and he can hear the fucking rasp in his throat, "but I'm _right fucking here_." Just. Just manages it, but it's important. He needs that, too, needs to say that, something like that, close e-fucking-nough, and get the ragged breath of Steve's laughter against his skin before Steve leans back a little, reaching for the drawer in the side-table. 

The flood of exasperation feels one step away from him, there but on the other side of a fucking wall, and his own voice saying, "Christ sake, Steve - " doesn't feel like something real, feels like a memory because what's _real_ is Steve kissing him again, and Steve dragging his free hand down the front rough-half-circle of scar and the bright, the fucking _bright_ in his head. 

He barely hears Steve's _Shhh_ and, "I know," and "just let me?" Barely remembers what the fuck Steve is even talking about and honestly doesn't fucking care. 

Or -

Maybe that's wrong. Maybe he cares, the exasperation far away but impatience right the fuck here, except that arguing's going to take _more_ time that just fucking letting Steve do what he wants, thinks is so damn important, so Bucky doesn't fucking argue. And after Steve gets him to roll half onto his side, left leg bending up across Steve's lower body so that Steve can work slick fingers into him, Bucky takes out his impatience by cradling Steve's throat in his left hand and mouthing at the pulse-point at the near side of Steve's neck. Teases with tongue and faint scrape of his teeth and then breathing over the wetness on Steve's skin - never as hard, never as much as he fucking _knows_ Steve wants, wiring an echo of his own fucking impatience into every fucking one of Steve's nerves. 

He smirks at how it makes Steve's breathing unsteady, hands unsteady, while Steve half-hisses or bites down the start of curses. Until he tugs Bucky back over him, breathing fast again and looks up at him to say, "Jesus Christ you're such a pushy, impatient jerk," and push Bucky's hair back out of his face with a hand that shakes and doesn't match the tone he can't quite get to anyway. 

"Nanny," Bucky retorts, because it's what comes next; he catches Steve's hand and bites the inside of Steve's wrist because he can and because it makes Steve gasp _oh God_ before he pulls Bucky down so Bucky can kiss him, hard, and brace his left arm against the couch again. 

And he wants, he wants, wants this _all of this_ \- Steve has both hands cradling his head, kissing his mouth and his temple and his closed eyes as Bucky lowers himself onto Steve's cock, sliding down and taking him in and _fuck_ he wants this, wanted this, his head's light and it's hard to breathe again. Like if he breathes he'll lose something, like if he breathes time passes and he won't be here and this won't be. Except he has to fucking breathe and he does and it stays. 

Now Steve has one hand tangled in his hair, holding Bucky's forehead against his, and the other pressed to the middle of Bucky's back to pull him close as he can and there's something silver-white-hot under every fucking inch of Bucky's skin and turning the inside of his head into too-bright empty _nothing_ , everything fucking gone everything quiet, _nothing_.

Except. 

Except Steve, alive. Except Steve's body against his, in his. Steve rocking with him, up into him, and Steve's fingers digging into his skin; Steve's mouth pressed to his temple, against the skin by his ear, and Steve's voice barely-breathing words, mostly-babbling - _missed you, need you, God I need you, like my lungs, like my blood, always need you, please_ \- and Bucky wants all of that, this, every fucking word every motion, feeling, all of it, so fucking much, and he wants _more_ , and he will always, always take anything, anything Steve's willing to give him, God, _please_. 

(Can't fucking see why it's this - no fucking way it should be this, nothing he can pay, nothing he has nothing in him worth this. Shouldn't be this. But it doesn't matter, he doesn't - selfish fucking coward but he can't, he doesn't fucking care, he can't, he wants this, God, Christ, Steve _please_ he wants this.) 

(Please.)

Here, now, Steve pulls his hand down across Bucky's neck and chest. He digs the fingers of his other hand into the side of Bucky's left thigh and the pressure makes points of _heat_ contract and flare in Bucky's head - for a few seconds, a handful, until Steve seems to notice what he's doing and flattens his hand out, smooths his palm over the places and strokes long circles up Bucky's hip to his lower back. And now his left hand slides up Bucky's right shoulder, and it's like Steve can't decide where to let either hand rest, like he wants to touch everywhere, every place Bucky can feel. 

And Bucky's fine with that. _God_ yes. He keeps his left hand braced against the arm of the couch; his right strokes the back of Steve's neck, fingers moving through sweat damp hair and then down to the ridges of his spine, holding close, the side of Steve's head against the side of his. He closes his eyes, and the world turns into touch and sound and smell and it's everything he fucking wants. 

Steve lets his right hand fall to Bucky's waist, just above the point of his hip, grip tight enough to feel; his left arm wraps around, from Bucky's rib-cage across his back to his left shoulder. He rests his head against the front of Bucky's right shoulder and Bucky lets Steve pull him down, further, more. Lets his body move to fit against Steve and he can't remember how to make his voice work but his breath hisses out at how fucking good it feels. 

Steve lets go of Bucky's shoulder to stroke his hand down over Bucky's hair and rest it on the back of his neck, his other hand still at Bucky's waist pulling Bucky hard against him, and _fuck -_

When the arm of the couch gives, there's no warning, or at least none that Bucky hears or remembers. Just the _crack_ of snapping wood and a lurch forward that throws Bucky's thoughts skidding out from under him like hitting a fucking patch of ice at a hundred miles an hour, and the sound of cloth under stress. 

Steve managed to grab the back of the couch so they don't fall and besides the fucking upholstery's sturdy enough for now that the arm's only weird and askew, not snapped back or torn off. Bucky takes that in, registers it, less than a second - but then it hits the blank, the skid, doesn't know what to do with knowing, doesn't know what it means. Hears Steve's startled half-incredulous laugh, or noise that gets close. 

Bucky tries to shake something from blankness; the thought that falls out is, "That's pathetic," and he means the couch and he also thinks it came out in Russian, not English. Steve half-laughs again, easing his grip on the back of the couch. His other hand's pressed to the middle of Bucky's back. It stands out from the sudden mental static, Bucky's skin feeling more heat from Steve's fingertips than can possibly be fucking real. 

Then Steve's kissing him again and the blankness lurches and crumples; Steve murmurs, "Doesn't matter," against Bucky's mouth and now he's pushing Bucky back. Pushes Bucky down onto the couch to lie on his back, stretch out on the cushions while Steve moves over him and kisses his jaw and the hollow of his throat. 

Bucky's head tilts back, just, as Steve slides back into him; Bucky pushes up against him, pulling him down. Wants more, deeper, and Steve's weight on him, pushing him down so the cushions have to give. And the empty moment's gone, the stall gone and he pushes them away further, throws himself at _this_ instead. Manages to breath _fuck yes_ as Steve's hand slides up under Bucky's thigh and Steve settles over him, onto him, pushing as deep into Bucky as he can. 

Bucky's fingers dig into Steve's left thigh as Steve starts to move, leaning on his left forearm and running his right hand over Bucky's stomach and chest. 

And for a moment, a second, Bucky catches Steve watching his face and there's something, a look he can't get a handle on, like Steve's looking for something and Bucky's not sure what - but then Steve shifts his weight, a little, and it changes the angle of his hips and Bucky doesn't fucking _care_ anymore. Clutches at the thought _that, yes, that_ and maybe manages to get ghosts of the words out, or not, he tries but he doesn't know. Either way Steve works the arm he's leaning on under Bucky's, under his shoulder and raises the other to the side of Bucky's neck to tilt his head back farther while Steve kisses and sucks marks into his neck. 

Bucky's right hand goes to the back of Steve's neck again and he just, just catches himself in time to curve his left over his head instead of letting it fall to Steve's shoulder. Braces it against the _other_ fucking arm, more so that he doesn't fucking forget than anything else and for a second there's this fucking hysterically laughing thought, like paper in a hurricane, that drags across his mind, thinks _might as well break the other one_ and then dissolves into the heat and _want_ that's eating everything else - finally, fuck, _Christ_. 

Steve's breath moves against his ear, and Steve's hand stays curved around Bucky's neck. His thumb strokes the front of Bucky's throat, down and back up and over again, lighting up every fucking nerve Bucky has and _fuck_ that's new, is that new? Bucky doesn't care, manages - maybe - to get out _don't stop_ into words, into something Steve can hear. For a second he brings his left hand down to cover Steve's, in case the words caught, to make sure: _this, do this, more_. 

(Puts his hand back because he knows the fingers of his right are already digging too hard into Steve's skin, he just can't - )

And then Steve moves. Keeps that hand where it is but pushes himself up on the other, shifts his weight so each thrust goes deeper and it's enough, almost enough to push Bucky over itself. When Steve bends to kiss him and moves his hand to Bucky's cock instead, Bucky clutches at Steve's upper arm and arches up against him to come and feel every-fucking-thing else in his head burn away, just for now, with this. 

He can feel Steve's breath hitch; Steve pulls away from the kiss to gasp out half-words, _fuck_ and _Bucky_ and _Christ_ before he groans, buries his face in Bucky's neck, and comes. 

Bucky cradles the back of Steve's head with his right hand and now he lets his left hand settle on Steve's shoulder. Steve doesn't move, works both arms under Bucky's ribs instead, because the trick is if Steve's on him like this, the part of Bucky that thinks he should pull away, thinks that the fucking shape of his life is to serve a fucking purpose and be put away when it's done, can't do a single fucking thing. Can't even get the thought far enough to try. 

Can't try to make him do what he never, never _fucking_ wants to, which is try to drag himself away from this. He never fucking knows how long he gets, how long before all the noise starts to empty back into his skull, but whatever snatched handful of time he _gets_ he wants it and if Steve doesn't stop him that part will always, always try to make him give it up, to fucking drag him away. 

He fucking hates it. 

The thought gets cut off because the couch lurches a little, and the side under Bucky's upper body drops a couple inches. It startles the fuck out of him, and out of Steve; Bucky hadn't _heard_ anything else break - but to be fair, he really hadn't been fucking listening. 

After a beat, Steve starts laughing, the laugh that has a giddy edge to it. He pushes himself up and says, "C'mere, before this thing falls apart and stabs one of us with a nail or broken wood or something while it's at it." 

And the aggravation _almost_ starts to settle into the base of Bucky's skull, except that instead of trying to get him to get up, Steve pulls Bucky down beside him on the floor. He pulls Bucky's right arm across his ribs, settling Bucky with his head on the front of Steve's shoulder. And the rug's stupidly thick pile and soft and made of God only knows what, so Bucky can handle that. 

Bucky can feel Steve's pulse in the skin against his ear, the side of his face. He shoves away the last of the impulse to go (fucking tidy himself away like a fucking toy) and makes everything that tried to tense up release again, fit his body against Steve's. Wants this. 

Always wants this.


	2. Chapter 2

Around about the time his heart-rate's finished winding down to something like normal resting, Steve says, "We broke the couch again." 

Okay technically it's only "again" if you count two at home, and one of those had been Bucky on a bad day, early on. But still. There have also been definite moments where Steve's thought they were _going_ to break a couch, which probably means the one at home's getting pretty abused and liable to break too, and then it really is "again". And it's not even always sex. 

It's just that when you come right down to it, it's hard to get a durable couch. Even quite expensive ones tend to be on the fragile side from the point of view of, well, them. Steve keeps wondering if Thor runs into the same problem, but never when he's around to ask. Probably not exactly _this_ variation of the problem, because Jane's slightly more breakable, but this is only _one_ way a lot of stuff's too fragile for people like them. The "expensive" part of expensive couches always seems to be what they're covered and padded with - and who's making them - not really the framework. 

A small stroke of luck meant Steve'd managed to find a sturdy _bed_ , and actually found it _before_ Bucky came home. That was back in the early days of drawing salary from SHIELD and looking at it sitting in his bank account and not even knowing what to _do_ with that much money, before Natasha dragged him to that accountant. The company that made the bed is small and relatively expensive, and he'd found them by link-hopping that ended at their YouTube channel. It's an oak model of a bed they also make in something else, but on a whim they'd decided to drive a car on it. 

The sheer solidity of a bed that could take a car parking on it, while also looking pretty nice, had appealed to Steve. It still does, with the added bonus that they haven't broken it yet. He often has this vague feeling that he should send them a product testimonial, because actually at this point he thinks a car on it might be _less_ impressive than the fact that his, theirs, is still in one piece. He just can't figure out how to do that without some kind of mess. And embarrassment. A lot of embarrassment. 

That company, though, doesn't make couches. Just about nobody makes couches you can park a car on, or at least nobody Steve's been able to find and who also make things he _likes_. There are a small handful, advertised for homes with developmentally disabled adults, but they're heavily skewed towards dull and functional and Steve doesn't _like_ them. Besides, he and Bucky usually only break things once. 

Okay, given the dining-room table, sometimes twice. And is the first time they've broken the couch _here_. 

In the idle way that comes with this kind of moment, with most of him still paying a lot more attention to threading his fingers through Bucky's hair, Steve wonders how that's going to go and which would actually be worse: Tony archly (or even childishly) being an ass about it, or Tony serenely and deliberately and _very loudly_ Not Saying Anything and just letting it hang. It's a tough choice. 

Bucky replies, "It was a boring couch anyway," without actually sounding like he cares much, and without actually moving. Steve is okay with that. Steve's okay with not moving for a while. The living-room area rug's almost as soft as a blanket, it's warm enough in here for now, and he's really okay with Bucky not going anywhere at all, even a little. 

Right now, Bucky's resting his head on the front of Steve's shoulder, his left thigh over Steve's right, and his left arm across Steve's chest in a way that (Steve is not in fact unaware) leaves Bucky's hand over where Steve's tags are resting against his own skin. The ones that match the tags that are around Bucky's neck, and caught between his chest and Steve's. 

He doesn't think Bucky's done that on purpose. But he also doesn't think it's coincidence, at least in the sense where "coincidence" is equivalent to saying "really doesn't mean anything". Maybe Bucky wouldn't consciously notice, but Steve feels like he's got a pretty shrewd idea that no matter where the tags had ended up falling, right now that's where at least one of Bucky's hands would be. 

For his part, he idly combs the fingers of his right hand through Bucky's hair, and tries to do something with the scattered piece of his brain. Not that dragging them together is something he really wants to do, but he thinks he needs to, at least a bit. Because just at the moment Steve's pretty sure of two things, two really, really important things. 

First, he just had stupid, stupid amounts of good luck. Again. The kind of luck that lets you walk out of a casino thousands of dollars richer instead of hundreds poorer, except maybe even more so, and definitely more than he has any right to expect. He's very, very sure of that. 

Second, the reason he needed it is that _somehow_ , just now, he tripped into places in Bucky's brain that were much, much more charged than he thought. And it means that even in the afterglow there's a thin, freezing trickle of the kind of horrified, retroactive fear that you get _after_ you realize you just traipsed across a damn minefield and didn't get blown to Kingdom Come. 

(Not that he's done that more than once, but it's a pretty vivid memory even so. He'd felt a little light-headed, Bucky'd briefly looked like a sheet, and they'd let Jacques rip three strips off the guy who should have fucking warned them, if only because Bucky'd said he didn't trust himself not to break the man's neck.) 

And that's the part where he feels like he needs to make his brain work, if only to make _sure_ they're in the clear.

Steve's not actually sure how, not sure _why_ they ended up wobbling at the edge of a really nasty metaphorical cliff. Really not sure. He might need to corner Natasha somewhere private and get her to help him sort through how. He'll do that, if he has to. If he can't figure it out himself. But he is absolutely damned sure that they _were_ and right now that's actually almost scarier than memory of the minefield. 

Sometimes that kind of edge happens, sometimes it can't be avoided no matter what either of them do and Steve's made peace with that, but he does _not_ like the idea of ending up there by accident, or all unawares. He wants to _know_ , so he can do what he has to by way of making damn sure they don't go _over_. So he does need to figure it out. 

He'll do that after he makes at least half a reasonable effort at figuring out which saint he should be lighting a candle for in thanks. Probably the one who looks after fools and madmen, but there might actually be a few of those. He feels like he should know this, but also that he doesn't care enough to make much mental effort. It's definitely not on the top of his head right now. 

Because the point is, he hadn't _meant_ to be dancing on the edge. And right now he can't see what did it. Or, he can see what did it, he can see the _tags_ did it, but he can't see why. 

They were - at least he'd expected and meant them to be - a joke-that-really-wasn't. The joke you tell because how serious you are makes you uncomfortable, maybe even scared. They were - well. They were a token. But they weren't - 

The thing with the iconography, the imagery, it mostly went without any real upset. At least it did as far as Steve can see, and he's been trying to be pretty careful about looking. At the very least _at home_ the sweats and the hoodie have joined the general rotation of clothes more or less where Steve'd expect them given what they were and what the fabric felt like. 

A few other things - a couple comments made dryly around someone else, that kind of stuff - have made Steve pretty sure that if Bucky's still wary about it, at least he's been able to drop the idea that somehow he's _not allowed_ to be openly associated with Steve, and without much stress, which is to say without enough stress that Bucky couldn't more or less keep it under wraps. 

You have to reassess your baseline, in these situations. 

The thing is, Steve could see why that could have been a lot bigger. He'd kinda expected it to be, because it wasn't just them - it had to do with the world and what the world saw and the part where the bit in Bucky's brain that didn't think he was allowed to be a person definitely didn't think he was allowed to be seen, or associated with anyone. Steve'd been relieved when it hadn't got any bigger: God knew Bucky could _use_ a few damn things that were contained and gradual, even if they were still big. 

And yes, the tags implied - well, a lot of things. That's what tokens do, what they're _for_ : some kind of short-hand to represent a lot of complicated stuff. But there's _nothing_ in them, nothing they represent, that Steve hasn't actually _said_. Aloud. And a lot. Sometimes in pretty extensive detail. It's not new. And while you can see the chain and even the tags, most of the time they end up under your clothes, and the only part that'd mean a damn thing to anyone _else_ is next-of-kin and the fact that each set is one of each, and firstly nobody'd need the tags to figure the first part out and secondly you'd have to actually get close enough to hold them to read it in the first place, or notice the second part. And that's not going to happen. 

Steve just left the tags on the dresser because he couldn't think of any way to do it otherwise that wasn't . . . uncomfortably awkward and full of exactly the kind of expression of feeling that swamps Bucky's head and then gets stuck there because he doesn't have the right shape to talk about it anymore. Or maybe that should be "yet". Either way. Exactly the kind of stuff that could take something that isn't a problem and make it a problem because of just that stress. God knows it's done it before. 

Steve'd known it was a little bit of a gamble, but not _this_ kind: he'd expected at most that Bucky'd pretend they weren't there, he'd never seen them, and get tense for a bit - and figured more likely Bucky'd take them and wear them and then be more inclined to give Steve shit for a few hours after Steve got home and find ways to needle him about sentimentality, and they'd basically never, ever talk about it. And he'd been fine with that. 

He definitely hadn't expected this. 

Because he recognizes this, all the things that go into making up "this". The intensity and desperation and need and _fear_ that means Bucky's clawing his way back from teetering over the God-damned abyss that's gonna hurt him badly if he hits the bottom, that's going to break things he's already tried to rebuild, and all of that going to the driven search for reassurance - physical reassurance, the kind he can believe even then. All of that meaning that this _is_ the lifeline in really God-damn rough waters and Bucky doing everything he can to come back, to stay, to end up _here_ instead of . . . somewhere really bad. Desperate to get here. 

That's not the problem. _Here_ is good, here is afterglow comfortably on the floor, _here_ is safe - secure in what's real and what isn't - and coincidentally physically relaxed and okay with doing things like staying where he's lying because it feels good. Steve _likes_ here. Here is fine. Here is a good place. 

Needing to fight that hard to get here is worrying. Really worrying. Steve'd rather only go that close to that kind of edge on purpose, if he can help it, and he definitely didn't plan it this time. 

(He's also trying to handle a certain amount of guilt - Bucky hadn't been having a _great_ morning when he'd chased Steve out, so running headlong into whatever this was can't've been fun - but Steve's pretty sure that as guilt goes this is the kind that'd actually piss Bucky off, and when your guilt is pissing off the person you're feeling guilty about it's probably time to focus on something else. It's taken him some time to figure that out and as an argument it doesn't always feel that compelling, and he's not always good at it, but this time, for now, it kind of works.) 

But - and Steve sort of finishes sorting through thoughts where serious work can be put off till later and thoughts that apply right here, right now - he thinks they, he, _did_ get that lucky and here, now, everything's okay. Maybe better. 

Thank Christ. 

After a minute or two more, Bucky shifts his weight over to his right arm, leaning his elbow against the floor so he can hold himself up, a bit, and look Steve in the face. 

And for a moment Steve feels really aware of the kind of . . . duplicity of some things, of some thoughts, or at least their divided, split-layered nature. Like, there's the fact that Bucky's eyes are objectively unfair, and Steve's seen that reflected on _other_ people's faces, but right along with it and way more important to Steve is how they're unfair because they're Bucky's eyes. So the thought _Bucky's eyes are unfair_ is true on the basis of the first and the second part, and maybe you'd think that just doubles the effect but it kind of can't, because that second part sort of goes on forever, and you can't double infinity. 

(He's been spending enough time around Tony that he thinks, suddenly, that mathematically you probably _can_ and that if he were ever to say that Tony'd insist on telling him how just because _he_ can. But that's not what the word fucking means in terms of being a _concept_ , the concept of _everything_ and _endless_ , and sometimes math just gets ridiculous.) 

Steve feels suddenly aware, hyper-aware of all that kind of thing. Bucky's eyes, his mouth, the line of his jaw - the really _important_ part is they're Bucky's, and he's here and Steve can see him, and so sometimes looking at them is the best thing in the world. It's a thought that tends to end up with Steve stumbling back on the word _beautiful_ , and he even said it just now - hadn't quite meant to, but _Jesus_ \- but he's still not . . . satisfied with it. With how you _can_ use it for that other thing, that shallower thing, the stuff meant by people who aren't seeing more than the symmetry and proportion of features, compared to the template of value they've built in their heads. Who _aren't_ seeing what Steve sees, and have no fucking idea. 

Can't have any fucking idea. 

He tries to use other words, but he hasn't found one of them he's satisfied with, either. 

Right now Bucky's looking at him, and there's something around the skin of Bucky's eyes, shape of his mouth, that makes Steve think of - God, how many months ago now? Of longing destroying caution, in the hallway at home, of finally kissing Bucky as hard as he fucking can. Of Bucky's weight on him for the first time in way, way too _God-damn_ long, his hands on Bucky's skin, and then makes him think of the fucking rawness in the way Bucky said _I missed you_. 

Reminds Steve of that, except . . . not exactly the same. Echo but a different shape. The same feeling of relief, maybe, but less brittle. Or . . . less fear. Maybe less fear. That, Steve thinks with a kind of comfortable inanity, would be good. 

Bucky's head's tilted a little, because of how he's leaning on his arm. On one side his hair falls straight and on the other, some of it falls against his throat. His mouth is red and his eyes are still unfair no matter _why_ they're unfair, and right now he's looking at Steve less like he's trying to find something or figure something out, and more like he's reminding himself of something he already knows. 

Steve kinda likes the difference. 

And God his best friend is beautiful. 

On the other hand Steve is still not the biggest fan of the floor, at least when there are other options available. And the couch may be dead (and more or less is) but if the master-bedroom bed here isn't quite park-a-car sturdy, they also haven't broken it yet. 

Steve sort of mixes sitting up and getting one leg under him with raising one hand to the side of Bucky's neck and kissing him, which works pretty well in terms of getting Bucky to sit up to go with the kiss without Steve actually having to suggest sitting up. It effectively cuts down on what's kind of a stupid argument rooted in Steve-doesn't-even-know-what so that all that Bucky says when the kiss ends is, "You're gonna drone the fuck on about beds being nice again aren't you," in an excessively resigned sort of voice. 

"I happen to like them," Steve retorts, halfway between bland and aloof. "Besides," he says, rolling himself to his feet and holding out a hand, "there was this _guy_ who used to go on and on for a pretty good while about how if you possibly _could_ get a bed, you really oughta - " 

"Yeah, whatever," Bucky says, shooting Steve a mock-irritable look and taking Steve's hand with his right one so Steve can pull him to his feet. "That guy was a jackass, anyway. And really fucking stupid." 

Steve hasn't said anything about what's around Bucky's neck, or his, and he's not going to. Not unless Bucky brings it up first. He _is_ wearing the tags, and Steve thinks if that does have anything to do with _this_ moment of difference, with there being less fear, then it was worth it. Is worth it. Would have been worth the risk even if he'd known there was so much of it. But he's sure as Hell not going to push his luck: all the reasons he left them on the dresser instead of giving them any other way, they all still apply. And not needing to ever bring anything up is part of what makes this work, even. So he can leave it. 

Other stuff, tho - 

Steve catches the back of Bucky's head and pulls him over to kiss, just, and then flick his ear. "Maybe you shouldn't talk about my best friend like that," he says, with overdone seriousness. He knows it kind of comes with the risk of Bucky actually trying to follow that one up, act like he's a different (lesser) person than he used to be instead of the same person with a lot of crap in between, but he's more or less okay with handling that, if Bucky does. He has arguments. They're good arguments. 

And Bucky doesn't, anyway; just rests his forehead against Steve's and says, "Nnn, maybe you should find the fucking bed before I decide it's way too much fucking trouble." 

 

Somehow, Natasha's managed to conspire to change the sheets here, too. Although Steve has to admit that the "conspiracy" is probably limited to telling the people who clean stuff or do linens when Steve and Bucky aren't here to use these other ones instead. But for that value of conspiracy, she absolutely managed to conspire. These ones are a darker blue than the ones he has at home and the comforter cover has a faint checkered pattern in jaquard, but they feel exactly the same. Steve's coming to the conclusion that they're silk, silk woven the way you weave cotton (which you apparently can do), and that's the reason Natasha took all the tags off and the inserts out of the packaging and wouldn't tell him what they were. 

Not that Steve can actually say she was overly careful with that, either - he probably _would_ have argued, or folded them up somewhere special forever, and the idea is still kind of one that's hard to fit into his head and feels hangs out the end. It's silk. Silk isn't something real people sleep on, isn't something real people _use_ for every-day things, that's something the rich do in stories to show they can waste . . .well, whatever they like, with no point to it besides showing off. Because Steve'd felt silk, what he'd thought all silk was, and he couldn't even see it making good sheets: too gauzy, too fragile, all of that. 

But he also can't argue these aren't just . . . basically really nice, really comfortable sheets, and definitely can't argue that Bucky doesn't like them a lot better. Bucky can't even argue that he doesn't like them a lot better. 

(Which now that he thinks about it kind of makes Steve wonder if it might be a good idea to look closer at the sensory stuff from clothes. He files that thought with a mental star on it for later.) 

Bucky shoves the comforter down out of the way and kind of drops onto the bed on his back. It's the kind of movement that would be maybe even a _flop_ from somebody else but isn't from him, because the only time Bucky knows how to move without distractingly spare grace anymore is when his head's in a bad way. Which, thankfully, isn't right now - which means he doesn't know how to move any other way than the one that can seriously distract Steve watching it. He pulls Steve down beside him, and Steve is more than happy to make that pretty easy if almost certainly not quite as pretty to watch. 

There's a lot of reasons why Steve's grateful Bucky did what he did, back in the burned out house. A lot of them - God, so many. Is so fucking glad Bucky did, no matter how many names Bucky calls himself for doing it. But right now, and moments like right now, probably count as at least close to the clearest demonstration of almost all of them. Most vivid illustration. 

Because right now, Bucky sprawls on his back, his far leg bent, as he pulls Steve over to him without any hesitation, just because he wants to; right now Steve can _feel_ the release in Bucky's body beside his and against his - the kind that comes with less wound up tension, less _pain_ \- not to mention, right _now_ Bucky's basically calm and here and not flinching away from the spikes stabbing at him from the inside of his own head. Or just letting those spikes stab him, convinced it doesn't matter that they hurt. 

Compared to just to normal, that's an improvement - never mind compared to when Steve got here earlier. And it's not a magic wand or a cure-all, or even close to always the right answer to whatever's messing Bucky up, but it's still _something_. It doesn't fix everything, but it's so damn easy imagine how much worse, how much harder everything would be _without_ this. Without something that gave Steve an excuse to touch that doesn't trip mental mines into blowing, without something that could so _clearly_ get across that he wants Bucky here all those times (so damn often) when words might as well be scattered sand in a hurricane - 

God, even without something that Bucky could just rely on to _feel good_ , to end up hurting less instead of more, when everything else was about as dependable as spring weather, if not less. Just one thing.

And that, that's all without even starting on what Steve wants, what he _gets_ out of this. How fucking reassuring it is for _him_ to be able to stretch out here on his side, one leg hooked over Bucky's, his free hand curving around Bucky's hip and know it's okay. That he can do any of this, that he can do _something_ that (at least when Bucky _wants_ it, looks for it, leaps at the chance) reliably helps. 

Given how everything else can change or fail even if they both want it not to. It's hard to overstate how much that fucking matters. 

Steve's not very good at feeling helpless. He knows that. Some of his worst decisions come from that: the overwhelming need to be able to do _something_ to make him feel like he has some kind of effect. Some kind of control. He's learned the hard way, is still learning, that sometimes what he _needs_ to do is suck it up and deal with feeling helpless, but he's still not good at it. Trying to imagine how much _worse_ that'd be . . . well. He kinda knows. He _spent_ God-damn years not being able to help anyone else, because he could barely keep himself going. 

Couldn't do a damn thing about TB, either. And this would be . . . worse. A lot worse. 

It's a whole Hell of a lot, it _means_ a whole _Hell_ of a lot, when it comes down to it, to be able to say _I'm here, and I want you here,_ , in maybe the one single language HYDRA _didn't_ fucking poison. Because if he can say that and have Bucky believe it, there's a lot more Bucky can maybe, maybe let himself risk believing. 

Steve runs his free hand down Bucky's ribs to his waist, and Bucky pulls him down to kiss, the kind of lazy, easy kiss that goes on for a while and maybe turns into a lot more than one, and they're maybe both okay with just letting it and not worrying what happens next. Bucky must've decided he's not gonna break anything by accident after all, because he's letting his left hand be the one that spreads fingers through Steve's hair, while Bucky's right hand strokes lazily over basically every place on Steve's skin he can reach, not fast, just moving everywhere, touching wherever he can. 

Touching's always been important to Bucky. It's just now, it's _more_ important. Just starting with how if he can touch something, keep touching it, that means it's still there. Still real. 

When Steve slides his palm down to Bucky's hip, Bucky lets his bent leg fall to the bed, so Steve can run his hand along the inside of Bucky's thigh to his knee and back. He trails his fingertips along veins under skin - Bucky doesn't have scars here, probably because the risk of hitting the artery would be too much to let anyone target it, or leave injuries without treatment. It's all one little thought, barely a flicker across his mind, but it still makes Steve flatten his hand, press his palm into Bucky's skin a little more, like if he really tries he can wipe away any fucking trace _they'd_ ever touched Bucky at all. He can't, but the idea kind of helps and Bucky moves into the motion of Steve's hand, encouraging. 

He drops his left hand to Steve's leg and pulls it further across his own, and wraps his right arm around just above Steve's waist to pull him down. Steve tucks his left arm under Bucky's shoulder and across his back, and turns his head to kiss Bucky's temple and bite lightly at the bottom corner of his jaw. 

"You want something?" he asks, and this close the derisive snort isn't just audible, it's a full-body comment. 

"You trying to be funny," Bucky tosses back, "or you just burn out _all_ your brains already?" 

Steve pushes back enough that Bucky can see him put on the theatrically "considering" face, so Bucky pulls his right arm out from around Steve to try and push him away by means of Bucky's palm in his face. He's thwarted by how Steve half-ducks and half pulls back, grinning slightly, but the point gets made. 

"You're easy," Bucky informs him, but he's not even pretending he's not half-smiling. Steve catches his hand and mock-bites the side of it. 

"I feel like we've kinda had this conversation before, once or twice," he says, dryly. "And pretty much established that's only true in one particular circumstance and also that I'm pretty okay with that." 

The pause that comes almost makes him uneasy, and maybe the only reason it doesn't is that even though Bucky's eyes go distant, there's enough of what Steve saw in the living-room - the sense of reminding, instead of searching - that it doesn't ring warning bells. That whatever's running through Bucky's head right now, Steve doesn't have to change anything about what he's doing, or showing, to make it safe. He can just wait until Bucky decides what to do with it. 

Then Bucky focuses again and his face goes to a complicated fondness, and he reaches his right hand up to trace the shell of Steve's ear, rest against his neck. "Yeah? So c'mere and be easy, already," he says, and pulls Steve down to kiss him again. 

There was a desperation before, in the living-room, that's not here now. Makes everything different - all _want_ , Steve supposes, instead of _need_. And God knows _want_ is enough, is still almost incredibly much, the miracle that this _is_ what Bucky wants. That when Steve eases into him this time what he does is pull Steve closer, further, breathes _Christ, yes_ against Steve's ear. And yeah, Steve is easy, God - for this, for Bucky, to be able to do this and give this, Steve'd crawl on his belly over a fucking mile of hot coal and think _he_ got off easy, do it all over again in a heartbeat, and that probably counts as a step beyond _easy_. 

And he doesn't have to. If he's easy so is this - a gift, Christ, a blessing, Bucky's legs around his waist and arms around his ribs, both of them body-warm, Bucky's breath in his ear or against his throat or Bucky's mouth against his, kissing him deep enough and hard enough he can't think anymore and doesn't want to. Doesn't have to. Can just have this, be this. 

Can hold himself up on one arm, enough to see Bucky's eyes close and his head fall back when Steve rests his hand against Bucky's neck. As he strokes his thumb over Bucky's throat again, Bucky takes a ragged breath, like before on the now-broken couch, and his back arches. It's new - Steve doesn't know if he just didn't find it before, right place and right pressure, or if it _is_ new, and doesn't care much either because _God_ he loves everything it does: Bucky tightening around him, thighs pressing against his hips and fingers digging _hard_ into his shoulder and his lower back.

Then Bucky rakes his fingernails across Steve's lower back instead and Steve's thoughts fall apart into tiny fucking pieces lost in the sound he makes against Bucky's neck. He doesn't really care enough to try and get them back. 

Doesn't want anything but this, God, all of it, always. 

He comes with Bucky's mouth against his neck and sending fucking sparks through every fucking nerve. Bucky mouths at his ear and bites at the corner of his jaw, holding Steve tight and close until its over and Steve's just panting against his shoulder. 

Then Bucky pushes him onto his back and pins Steve's left hand to the sheets over his head. Steve hooks his right arm around Bucky's waist and pulls him over, between Steve's legs, before he slides his hand around, across Bucky's hips and abdomen and down to close around Bucky's cock and move. 

Bucky's eyes close for a second and then he shifts his weight onto where his right hand pins Steve's left. He watches Steve's face as he traces the line of Steve's jaw, metal still body-temperature - Steve's jaw and his cheekbone and then Bucky's hand rests there, thumb stroking over Steve's lower lip until Steve opens his mouth to let it inside instead, lips closing around it and tongue pressing it to the roof of his mouth. Steve watches Bucky's eyes close again, and then pulls his hand out from under Bucky's and pulls Bucky down to him, beside him. Rolls them both onto their sides and presses close enough that one of Bucky's legs slides between his; he reaches up to cradle the side of Bucky's face and stroke along his cheekbone with his thumb, while Bucky kisses Steve hard and thrusts into his hand until he comes, gasping. 

And right then Steve holds Bucky to him, close and then closer - top arm wrapped tight around Bucky's waist and the other cradling the back of Bucky's head, Bucky's leg caught between his. Doesn't relax until the second he feels that Bucky does, the moment that wants to drag him away over, passed. The one moment he trusts, has to trust Bucky doesn't want him to believe. And he does, and doesn't loosen his hold until he can feel Bucky's muscles unwind.

Even then, Steve still doesn't let go, but the arm around Bucky's waist relaxes, and the other lets go of the back of Bucky's head so Steve can push Bucky's hair out of his face, so Steve can see him. 

See eyes that might be tired, but aren't surrounded by tightened skin from pain Bucky's ignoring, or something ugly in his head he's trying not to see. Just tired, and with a drowsiness that says he's just about at the wall, the one where the driving need from _whatever_ Steve's meant-to-be-simple token set off is all sorted out, and so all Bucky's energy runs out, all at once. That whatever else Bucky meant to say or do or think is going to have to wait till later, because deeper, simpler parts of him are deciding it's time to fucking _sleep_. 

It means Steve should probably make some effort to get them both up, to clean up, whatever - but fuck, he really doesn't want to move that much. Not right now. Says, "C'mere," instead, and rolls over on his back again, pulling Bucky with him and managing to hook the comforter with his foot on his fourth or fifth try, to drag it up where he can get hold of it and pull it over them both. 

It's the middle of the afternoon; he can clean up and figure out what to do about the couch later, and still not be up all night. And Bucky's eyes are already closed, anyway. 

 

When Bucky's still asleep an hour later, Steve carefully works his shoulder out from underneath his, so he can quietly slip out of the bed. It gets him an eye slit open, because it just about always will, but that's fine. He says, "Getting my phone," and knows Bucky doesn't really hear take in the words, just the shape of a thought that is Steve's coming right back. That _he_ doesn't need to do anything about anything, and that's the point of it. 

Steve ends up pulling on a pair of sweats out of the drawer because the blinds are all open, and while okay maybe a) it's a little _late_ and b) they're so far up it doesn't matter, and most importantly c) the Tower windows are reflective no matter what time of day or night so the only way to see in through them is to literally press your face against the glass and Steve's pretty sure someone (JARVIS at the least) would notice, but at least when his best friend _isn't_ completely melting his brain, modesty habits die hard. Before, he hadn't had any room in his head to even think about it, but now he does, and not pulling something on would make him feel awkward and uncomfortable, and that's a waste of brain. 

He picks his coat up off the kitchen floor where he dropped it and fishes his phone out of the pocket, gets a glass of water and then goes back to the bedroom. And realizes that Bucky hit the metaphorical wall even harder than Steve thought, because when Steve sits down Bucky doesn't actually bother even pretending he's really awake, just throws his arm over Steve's waist, uses his stomach as a pillow, half-curls up and goes back to _real_ sleep. It's not a problem, at all, but it's the kind of unthinking move Bucky really, really only gets when he's so tired and been so asleep that the parts that drive him to watch and double-check everything are switched off, and he actually can take certain things completely for granted. 

E.g. even if Steve's not going right back to sleep, it's okay to hold onto him. 

Steve smoothes Bucky's hair back from his face, and then rests that hand on the back of Bucky's neck. Feels the chain for the tags under his hand and feels his thoughts twist just a little wry, almost all at himself: he'd apologize, kind of _wants_ to apologize because he really _didn't_ mean to kick everything over or think that's what he was doing, but he's got a pretty definite feeling Bucky'll get mad at him if he tries. And more importantly, apologizing risks maybe what Steve means - the apology for the inadvertent mental kick - tangling up around stuff and getting mistaken for an apology for the tags themselves - which he doesn't mean at _all_ , ever - and frankly Steve'd rather take Thor's hammer to his own hand. 

Or get Thor to, with the whole lifting thing. 

Steve sets his phone on his knee and rubs his eyes lightly with forefinger and thumb of his free hand, trying to think clearly enough to figure out whether there's anything he should think about. Or even anything that the future-him of, oh, twelve hours from now will really want him to have thought about, back here and now. It's not impossible, but it's a lot of work. 

Conveniently, at least, he didn't have any plans: he'd come by the Tower because he was in the area and he might as well make sure Elizabeth'd had something meal-like sometime in the last six hours before heading home. And then when he got to the desk in front of the private elevators, Ms Stone had politely noted that Bucky was already here, derailing everything. 

Food wasn't a problem; even if magical pixies (that is, the actually very nice domestic staff that cleaned up after the lot of them and who thankfully are pretty well paid) hadn't put anything in the cupboard the two of them wanted to eat, or at least that Steve thought he had a reasonable chance of getting Bucky to eat for reasons other than "fine it's the designated time for calories, who cares what they are", basically every restaurant in New York and probably quite a few anywhere else is potentially available without having to go anywhere at all. 

Well. Steve supposed there might be someone _somewhere_ who owned a restaurant who would, for reasons of their own, pass up the standard amount of money he knows gets used to turn "we don't do take-out" into "did you want to take the flatware too" (which is apparently just standardized at whatever it usually takes to get one of the officially Nice places to do it, which means that for anything else it's just huge), but he can't think of a _lot_ , or what those reasons might be. At least, not in someone who could also manage to run a restaurant. Maybe if one of them was an ex-girlfriend of Tony's still holding a grudge, but even then, the manager'd probably just ring it in under someone else's name, because it's a Hell of a tip. 

And enough stuff in terms of clothing and so on's ended up migrating here that not having planned to be overnight wasn't a problem, so - 

It takes a few minutes for Steve to realize what's niggling at his brain, and then he drags one hand down his face, firstly because it _shouldn't've_ taken that long, and secondly because more importantly there isn't a little orange ball of fur curled up somewhere on or around Bucky even after more than an hour, and that . . . could be a problem. 

Steve's not surprised, mind. He kind of doubts Bucky was in a state of mind conducive to thinking about things like "I am probably going to end up crashing which means we'll sleep at the Tower which means I should bring the kitten", in a way where "kind of doubts" actually means Steve is pretty sure at the time Bucky couldn't've seen that state of mind from the top of a really tall building. Steve also doesn't need much time to conclude that if he asks Bucky, Bucky'll probably try to convince Steve that it's fine (there's lots of kibble out and lots of water, it won't kill her to spend a night alone), it won't bother him, and also that Bucky'll be lying through his teeth. 

There are so many worse things Bucky's anxiety and paranoia could focus on that Steve's frankly _relieved_ he can mostly displace it onto a cat who's small and needy and pretty easy to wrangle and who isn't any the worse for having a life limited to two safe complexes of rooms. It just means that Steve's not even remotely inclined to believe Bucky when he tries to blow off worrying if she's not exactly where she should be, when she should be there, and in the case of "over the night" is comfortable defining that as "wherever Bucky's sleeping" as opposed to "in the condo." 

(And if they aren't somewhere safe for Abrikoska, Steve knows, the odds are Bucky won't be sleeping. So.) 

They could just go home but honestly Steve . . . would rather not, not until morning, not until after an actual _full night_ of sleep. Steve's got a pretty shrewd idea that even in an hour or two when he does wake Bucky up so they can eat and shower and everything else, well - 

Going _out_ of either living space (here or home) to where other people are takes . . . a certain set of defenses. Mostly it's fine, it's not a big deal, but right now Steve only has to look at Bucky asleep to know that they're basically all down. And more than that, even the ones most people have all the time _they're_ not in whatever their sanctuary is, that they don't even realize _are_ defenses to start with - even those ones are down. For most people those are enough, but for Bucky not so much, so he has to layer on others, too. 

Steve couldn't quite tell anyone _why_ he's pretty sure Bucky needing to do that _before_ he's had a chance to ease the normal defenses back up is a bad idea - he just keeps getting images of sandpaper rubbing against open wounds, that kind of thing, flickering across the metaphorical screen in his head. So he'll go with intuition on that one. But recovering enough for that's going to take a few more hours than there are between, say, now and ten o'clock tonight. And Steve'd _rather_ it take as long as needed to be as easy as it can, because whenever he can make it so Bucky _doesn't_ have to do something the hard way, Steve's a little happier about the world. 

Going to get her and coming back's got exactly the same problem, and it's not even much better if only Steve goes. And there are other options but they all involve giving someone the keys to the building and the condo and Steve feels really, really disinclined to do that. The one and only time that's happened, the idiot exterminators let the kitten _out_ and that's not exactly a good precedent. And it's . . .home. He doesn't really want strangers there. 

And Steve knows if the idea unsettles him, even a little, it's going to put Bucky's hackles around his ears - and that he'll try to ignore it and deny it and end up even more strung out. 

On top of that, throw a new person at her and the kitten's going to hide under the bed and do her best to flay anyone who tries to get her to come out. And Natasha's consulting in Bern - probably enjoying how just about everyone who was throwing horrible names at her and calling for her imprisonment after Insight now has to be nice to her again or she _won't_ advise them on what in the name of God to do about just how many ex-HYDRA and the less morally scrupulous actually-just-ex-SHIELD operatives are showing up in mercenary (oh, sorry no, "private security") companies moving into most, if not all, the international hot zones still going strong - and Clint is - 

Actually, Steve has no idea where Clint is, and nobody else seems to either; he'd asked Tasha, once he realized that, and got back _long story, tell you later_. 

Somehow later hadn't actually happened, they'd ended up texting about the relative likelihood of respective STRIKE or STRIKE-backup guys getting out of the Triskelion alive (her estimate's a little higher than Steve's, but they're roughly the same) and Steve'd sort of forgot. Which she'd clearly meant him to do, so he puts a mental star on that whole thing, too, to follow up on. But the point is, the two other people Abrikoska's not going to try and rip to pieces aren't available. 

It also probably takes longer than it should for Steve to realize that actually, someone already has keys _and_ isn't going to get her hands lacerated and - it being Saturday - might even be available and not mind taking a slightly pointless round trip down. He figures he'll blame it on being tired, and opens his contacts to find Mercedes' number. 

 

Mercedes agrees fast enough to make Steve feel slightly guilty. Her only momentary wrinkle is she's hanging out with her friend, with the pretty strong (if Steve's any judge) silent subtext that she really doesn't want to leave the other girl behind. It only takes a half a second for Steve to place _Hannah_ as the shy, nervous, very quiet black girl Mercedes' age who lives around the other side of the building and to both pretty much see why Mercedes doesn't want to abandon her for the rest of the late afternoon (even Steve's brief exposure makes him think she'd take it personally, and in the unhappy way, not the indignant one) and to come to the conclusion that her following Mercedes up to the condo or to here is . . .not an issue. 

Remembering explaining the existence of Abrikoska to Betty, Steve's mouth quirks: small, vulnerable and fragile creatures. That Bucky doesn't have much to do with the girl even around Mercedes is probably because Bucky figures he'd scare her, and he might not be wrong about that. Steve remembers her as the kind of kid who starts off by assuming any given adult's going to be mad at her, as a matter of course, and only winds down from there when nothing bad happens. 

He tells Mercedes to let him know when she gets on the subway. Then he times out a more or less _likely_ window for her getting here, and decides to Hell with it, and asks JARVIS to order dinner from that one Indian place (which is actually the only thing Steve knows it as, and damned if he's going to ask for its actual name right now) to arrive something like an hour and a half after the later end of that window, and also to let someone know that a couple of fourteen year olds with a kitten would need to be allowed up here sometime in the next couple hours. Then he asks JARVIS let him know when they hit the lobby, in case Mercedes forgets to text. That'd give him enough time to make sure he's basically presentable. 

Then he stops, thinks for a minute, and adds, _JARVIS, the girls are going out of their way to do me a favour, there any way to get them a ride home and get *them* dinner from wherever they want, on me, to say thanks?_

He adds _on me_ because he can and will pay for it, but kind of suspects it's going to get "lost" somehow. A lot of that kind of thing does, because Tony's like that.

It still makes the inside of his brain itch a bit but honestly, as far as Steve can tell Tony really doesn't _care_ about money or about giving it away. And Steve'd be snide about that being easy when you have so much, but frankly by now he's encountered quite a few rich folks and a lot of them are even tighter-fisted than anyone Steve'd known who had to count pennies and expected to get back on anything they so much as let out of their bank accounts. Never mind the ones who really are trying to get a metaphorical rope around your neck. So Steve's come to realize not-caring's actually kind of rare, even with that. 

And mostly it comes down to, if Tony likes you and he _can_ do something to make your life easier, it gets important that he do it, kinda out of all proportion. He'd probably try to do it even if he were poor, honestly - and end up pretty broke pretty fast. And, well, Steve's always known people like that. Tony's just lucky he can be that way and he doesn't have to worry about it, he can just . . . _be_ that way, and do what he can, and he does.

It's less snide and more wry-slash-rueful honesty to note that in _part_ this is because Tony knows he can be a royal pain in the ass to actually deal with, and since he doesn't know how to _stop_ that, he's constantly trying to make it up. And Steve's come to the conclusion at this point that it really is _doesn't know how_ \- that the habits really are that ground in, that even if he's honest to God trying, there's still a good chance he's gonna fail, and end up being a pain in the ass. And that trying costs. 

Steve really _isn't_ surprised Howard was a terrible parent, but it does make him want to put his face in his hands and sigh. 

_Of course,_ comes JARVIS' completely unsurprising reply. _I will arrange it with Ms Stone._ Which JARVIS probably adds just to give Steve some feeling he knows what's going on. Which is nice of him. 

 

Then Steve figures _the Hell with it_ again, finds the next episode he's got for a podcast on the history of the automobile, and slides down so that he's lying down more than sitting up. Bucky doesn't even wake up a little, just resettles himself while still asleep. Steve lets his hand rest on the back of Bucky's head again, closing his eyes to drowse until he needs to recover the kitten. 

 

When JARVIS lets Steve know that the girls are in the building he manages to get out of the bed without waking Bucky up, and manages to remember a shirt. He _doesn't_ manage to think about the marks on his neck until the door's actually sliding open, though, which isn't enough time to do anything but be resigned. 

It's not normally a problem: it really _is hard_ to make any mark that lasts more than several hours, and after even just a couple hours most of the time you have to be pretty close to see them, and that's without doing anything at all - and spending months in the constant company of women who work on stage will teach you how to hide just about _anything_ with a tiny amount of makeup, not that he's ever bothered. But he could. 

But at least a few of today's _aren't_ what falls under what he ends up with "most of the time", are kind of a lot . . . _more intense_ than the ones "most of the time", and it's only been a couple hours anyway. Plus, this - conversational distance in a residential setting - probably counts as pretty close. And Steve _remembers_ being fourteen. You notice this stuff. 

Still nothing he can do about it but think _oh well._

When the girls step out of the elevator, Steve's saved from immediate awkwardness by the fuzz-brained baby-cat immediately trying to squirm and writhe her way out of Mercedes' jacket (where she's apparently spent the trip), and dropping to the floor from an angle that, if she weren't a cat, should have landed her on her head. Steve gives Mercedes and her friend a quick _one-second_ gesture and bends down in the hopes of keeping Abrikoska from yowling the place down by confirming that yes, she's where she thinks she is. 

It almost works - he doesn't make it quite in time, but she also kind of misses the chance to yowl, because the noise she makes is too high and squeaky and not that loud; she sniffs his fingers a couple of times, and he says, "Shhh. Hush, you." And then he adds, "Yeah, shoo, go find him and shut up," half-muttering to himself because she's already gone, the skittering noise of her running on hard surfaces interrupted every time she hits carpet. 

Steve knows there isn't any chance of Bucky not waking up at all, as such, but this way he'll hopefully be too busy scowling at an incredibly needy little cat to feel like he needs to investigate what's going on. 

Mercedes cranes her neck to watch the kitten run away as Steve steps into the little hallway; behind her, Hannah's skipped all the way to (if Steve's any judge) a state of acute nervousness, and then the hyper-alert from the nervousness meaning she's noticing every possible thing she could burst into giggles over (from the cat running away to, yeah, Steve's neck) and is desperately trying _not_ to. Poor kid. He hopes someone with the care of her knows _that_ much anxiety isn't really normal. 

"Sorry," he says, quietly, "I'd invite you in, but - " 

Mercedes is saying, "S'okay," before he actually finishes _starting_ the sentence, which is just as well - he'll quite happily take the opportunity to skip any kind of explaining as to why they can't come in. They can imagine whatever they want, but the point is he won't have given any real pointers as to one thing or another, and that's probably for the best. 

And for fourteen years old, the way Mercedes' eyes flick to her friend and then back is actually pretty subtle, but Steve's _not_ fourteen so in the second it takes for her face to move from blank reaction to the kind of wide-eyed look that comes with Solemn Pronouncements, Steve has no trouble reading, _now I'll be a brat so_ I'm _the embarrassing one_ as the thought scrolls its way across her mind. 

For just a moment he almost _feels_ psychic. 

So when she informs him, "You kinda look like you got attacked by a vampire," it's _Steve_ who has to try hard not to laugh. It'd be complicated laughter, the kind of laughing that kids her age always take as being _at_ them, but haven't quite got enough life behind them to realize it's as much about the laughing adult remembering when he (or she) was the kid as anything else. And in this case a whole load of other stuff, too, all of it stuff he can't really explain. Some of it they probably wouldn't understand even if he did, not because they're not bright enough, but just because you can't see that far from the slopes of fourteen. 

But the remark lets Hannah burst into giggles behind her hands in a way that's At Mercedes, instead of At Steve, which saves her from feeling like she's being rude. And she really is a nervous kid, so that's for the best. 

Steve puts on an expression of Patient Tolerance so he can reply, "Yeah, right now I would," and leave it at that. He reaches over to mess up Mercedes' hair, but in a way that lets her duck easily. "Thanks, kiddo," he says, and then glances at Hannah and adds, a little more seriously, "And thank you for letting me interrupt whatever it was you were doing for a subway ride." 

Hannah's eyes open almost wide enough to be perfect circles and her hands come away from her mouth, "Oh no," she says, quick enough it's like the words are darting out, "it's fine." 

Mercedes says, "No big," with a shrug that's almost overdone in how casual it is, and Steve resists the urge to _actually_ ruffle her hair this time. Six of one half a dozen of the other the Casual is to impress Hannah, to make Steve pay attention to her _instead_ of Hannah (since Hannah's clearly so uncomfortable with any attention at all), or both. Whichever it is, Steve gives her another Tolerant look so that Hannah can relax (and he can see her do it, out of the corner of his eye) and says, "Yeah, well, you're gonna let me buy you supper as a thank you, so when you go downstairs just let Lia know where you want and she'll set it up." 

Watching her try not to wave that away _immediately_ is kind of funny - he wonders if she even knows. He goes on, "And that means anywhere: if you want to go home and get something delivered, go ahead. Just don't be stubborn," and he mimes thwacking her over the head, "about letting me say thanks." 

"Are you even allowed to call out someone else for being stubborn?" Mercedes demands, mock-glaring, and Steve still has to struggle not to laugh at her. Besides, it's a pretty good line. 

"I sure am," he retorts, pointing a mock-warning finger at her. "Because I know what I'm talking about." And she doesn't have an answer off the bat, so he hits the call-button to the elevator and the doors slide back open. "Have a good night, girls," he says, and figures it's probably almost for the best that Hannah obviously _wants_ to retreat, because that makes it less like he's hustling Mercedes out and away, like he normally never would. "And thank you," he adds. 

There's a brief duet of _good night!_ before the doors close. 

Steve flicks off the light in the little foyer and then has a thought - he does know how to call right down to whoever's on the private elevator desk himself, so he can ask Ms Stone to make sure they _don't_ manage to sneak out of the building without a ride and sorting out food. He thinks she finds something about the whole thing pretty funny, but Steve has also just decided he's pretty much done trying to figure out anybody else's thought process for the rest of the night, as of now. Other than Bucky's. 

Frankly his are usually the easiest. Not always. But mostly. 

He turns off the phone and goes back to the bedroom, where Bucky's lying on his side sort of more or less awake, with Abrikoska trying to push her head up through the bottom of his chin while pressing the rest of her into his throat and the top of his chest, purring loud enough for three cats. He's idly petting her and half-frowns at Steve. 

"Did you just get the kid to bring this thing all the way here?" he demands, and Steve's pleased to note there's still sleep in his voice. Steve sits down on the bed beside him.

"No," he says, blandly, "it was at least an hour ago I got her to do that." And now instead of a half-frown he gets a half-glare. 

"That was fucking excessive," he says, rolling over his onto his back and putting the kitten on his chest. She promptly flattens out, oozing herself forward to bump her head underneath his chin again. She seems to be determined to be somewhere near his throat, but as Steve thinks about it he figures he's seen mom-cats with babies doing that, so it probably makes sense. 

"Uh-huh," is all Steve elects to say, declining to even show up for the argument, and now the look is unconvincingly annoyed. 

"Don't fucking do that," Bucky says, and the resentful irritation in his tone of voice isn't very convincing to Steve either. 

"Do what?" Steve asks, all innocence or at least as much innocence as he can put on, and then he grins when instead of going for a retort Bucky goes for trying to shove him off the bed one-handed, with one sharp push to Steve's hip. Foiling that, Steve adds, "You should come shower." 

Bucky's more or less unconsciously stroking his right hand down the kitten's back, and rubs lightly at his eyes with thumb and fingertip of his left hand. "Yeah, and then you're gonna start on about food, aren't you. You and beds and food and fucking showers - " 

"Yeah, yeah, I'm corrupted by decadent civilization, sue me," Steve retorts. "And yeah I do have food coming, eventually, and you'll feel better after you've showered. I could bribe you," he adds, reaching over to scruffle the fur on the kitten's head and get a scolding meow for his pains. 

"Yeah, with what?" Bucky asks, shooting Steve a sideways, sardonic and amused look. He picks up the kitten and holds her up where he can look at her; she mews at him this time and he tells her, "You're a spoiled little goddamn princess is what you are, cat," in Russian. 

"I dunno," Steve replies, blandly. "What would you want?" 

 

They manage not to break the glass doors for the shower, but it is kind of a near thing.


End file.
